Review of Network-Based Approaches for Privacy

We first provide an overview of the better-known network approaches for assuring anonymity and privacy over networks. These approaches include anonymous communication networks such as MIX network, Onion Routing network, Crows system and Freedom network. We also examine peer-to-peer networks such as OpenPrivacy and JXTA. We then analyze their effectiveness and the possible attacks to these networks based on traffic analysis techniques. We also discuss their implementation and design issues for network privacy, and some problems engendered by firewalls, dynamic IP, NAT and VPN. In the conclusions we summarize the results and describe the research opportunities in this domain.