US Patent 8140502 Preserving individual information privacy by providing anonymized customer data

A method of preserving individual information privacy for each of a plurality of customers while providing aggregated information about the plurality of customers includes storing static customer data and dynamic customer data of the plurality of customers in a protected database. The method includes restricting shared access to the static customer data and the dynamic customer data to a set of approved privacy-preserving queries. The privacy preserving queries include a privacy-preserving aggregation query that uses one or more parameters to indicate a characteristic of interest for which aggregation of the static customer data and the dynamic customer data is requested. The privacy-preserving aggregation query may be configured to retrieve aggregated customer data related to the characteristic of interest. The aggregated customer data may be returned in response to the privacy-preserving aggregation query not including any personally identifiable information of any particular one of the plurality of customers.