Patent Issued for Systems and methods for selectively scrambling data (USPTO 11741260): United Services Automobile Association

2023 SEP 20 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- According to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx journalists, a patent by the inventors Pena, Ric M. (Boerne, TX, US), Smith, Arthur Quentin (Fredericksburg, TX, US), Tougas, Brian (San Antonio, TX, US), filed on July 31, 2020, was published online on August 29, 2023.

The assignee for this patent, patent number 11741260, is United Services Automobile Association (San Antonio, Texas, United States).

Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “The present disclosure relates generally to data privacy. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to preventing third parties from accessing data that a user desires to remain private.

“This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the present disclosure, which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to help provide the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present disclosure. Accordingly, it is understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.

“A dwelling or other structures may utilize certain devices (e.g., electronic sensor or smart home devices) to provide certain benefits to a user associated with the dwelling. For example, the smart home devices (e.g., doorbells, cameras, audio devices, voice interaction devices, temperature controllers) that acquire certain data (e.g., video data, audio data) may provide benefits such as convenience, improving security of the dwelling, and/or improving the efficiency of performing certain tasks in the dwelling (e.g., controlling climate, purchasing products, scheduling tasks). At least in some instances, the electronic sensor devices may be managed or maintained by certain third parties that require that the user authorize (e.g., via signature, accepting terms and conditions, and the like) the third parties to receive, store, own, and/or have access to the data in order for the user to utilize the electronic sensor devices. However, certain data acquired by the electronic sensor devices may include sensitive information (e.g., passwords, personal photos/videos, authentication information, social security numbers, political affiliation, religious affiliation, social views) or other personal information that the user may not want the third party to access.”

In addition to obtaining background information on this patent, NewsRx editors also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “One or more specific embodiments will be described below. In an effort to provide a concise description of these embodiments, not all features of an actual implementation are described in the specification. It should be appreciated that in the development of any such actual implementation, as in any engineering or design project, numerous implementation-specific decisions must be made to achieve the developers’ specific goals, such as compliance with system-related and business-related constraints, which may vary from one implementation to another. Moreover, it should be appreciated that such a development effort might be complex and time consuming, but would nevertheless be a routine undertaking of design, fabrication, and manufacture for those of ordinary skill having the benefit of this disclosure.

“When introducing elements of various embodiments of the present disclosure, the articles “a,” “an,” and “the” are intended to mean that there are one or more of the elements. The terms “comprising,” “including,” and “having” are intended to be inclusive and mean that there may be additional elements other than the listed elements. Additionally, it should be understood that references to “some embodiments”, “one embodiment”, or “an embodiment” of the present disclosure are not intended to be interpreted as excluding the existence of additional embodiments that also incorporate the recited features.

“As used herein, the term “application” refers to one or more computing modules, programs, processes, workloads, threads, and/or computing instructions executed by a computing system. Example embodiments of an application include software modules, software objects, software instances, and/or other types of executable code.

“It is presently recognized that it may be advantageous to enable a user (e.g., a dwelling or property owner) to allow or deny utilization by a third party of at least a portion of data captured by a smart home device (e.g., electronic sensor or smart home devices), while still enabling the user to utilize the smart home device to improve the security of the dwelling and/or improve the efficiency of certain tasks. For example, the user may not desire to transmit image data and/or audio data that contains sensitive data or information acquired by a camera and/or audio device while still allowing the electronic sensor devices to operate. As one non-limiting example, the user may not desire to transmit data associated with video meetings with doctors or health providers, accountants, and attorneys. Accordingly, embodiments of the present disclosure relate to selectively scrambling data that is being sent to a third party. In particular, the payload of a data packet used to transmit the data captured by the electronic sensor device may be scrambled, while a header and metadata of the data packet may be maintained (e.g., not scrambled). By scrambling the payload of the data packet and not the payload or metadata of the data packet, the data packet will appear normal to the target device, such that third party may not discern that the data is not in an expected format, has been scrambled, or otherwise altered. As such, the user may continue to receive the benefits of having the electronic sensor device maintained or managed by the third party (e.g., warranty registration, software updates, firmware updates). In this way, the user may continue to utilize the electronic sensor data to provide security to the user and improve the efficiency of tasks performed by the user because the third party may still receive and store the scrambled data. However, the scrambled data may be unusable by the third party, thereby protecting the privacy of the user.

“With the foregoing in mind, FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a selective scrambling system 10 that includes a user device 12, a communication hub 13, a network 14, a target device 16, electronic sensor or smart home devices 18, and the like. The user device 12 may include an electronic device having a processor that, in some embodiments, performs one or more operations described herein. The user device 12 may be worn, held, or associated with the property owner (e.g., the user) of a property 26. For example, the user device 12 may be a personal computer, laptop computer, tablet computer, smart phone, and so forth. In some embodiments, the user device 12 may be a router or similar computer networking device. The user device 12 includes instructions executable by the processor to scramble a payload of data acquired by electronic sensor devices 18. As referred to herein, scrambling data includes randomizing at least a portion of the data by randomly inserting and/or deleting portions of the payload to generate data that is unusable, such as by inserting random numbers, strings, and/or binary bits, and/or deleting data from the payload.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. An electronic device, comprising: a processor; a tangible, non-transitory, computer-readable medium, comprising instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to: receive data captured by one or more electronic sensor devices; determining a time range when data was captured by one or more electronic sensor devices; determine a periodicity that the one or more electronic sensor devices are attempting to transmit the data; determine that the data captured by one or more electronic sensor devices is to be transmitted to a third-party device based on the periodicity; determine that the data comprises sensitive information based on the time range; scramble a payload portion of the data to generate scrambled data in response to determining that the data comprises sensitive information and the data is to be transmitted to the third-party device; and transmit the scrambled data to the third-party device.

“2. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the instructions cause the processor to determine that the data is to be transmitted to the third-party device based on a type of data, wherein the type of data comprises image data, audio data, or both.

“3. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the instructions cause the processor to determine that the data is to be transmitted to the third-party device based on an identifier of a company associated with the one or more electronic sensor devices.

“4. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the instructions cause the processor to scramble the portion of the data by randomizing one or more portions of the data.

“5. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the one or more electronic sensor devices comprise a voice communication device.

“6. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the one or more electronic sensor devices comprise an image capture device.

“7. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the electronic device is configured to intercept the data captured by the one or more electronic sensor devices before the data is transmitted to the third-party device.

“8. A method, comprising: receiving, via a processor, an input related to a user agreement associated with one or more electronic sensor devices disposed within a property; determining, via the processor, a time range when data was captured by one or more electronic sensor devices subsequent to receiving the input; determining, via the processor, that data received from the one or more electronic sensor devices disposed within the property comprises one or more characteristics characterized as sensitive information associated with a property owner of the property based on the time range; scrambling, via the processor, a payload portion of the data to generate scrambled data in response to determining that the data comprises the one or more characteristics indicating that the data comprises the sensitive information; and transmitting, via the processor, the scrambled data as a payload to a third-party device associated with the one or more electronic devices.

“9. The method of claim 8, wherein the one or more characteristics comprise a data type, wherein the data type comprises video data, audio data, image data, or any combination thereof, wherein the data is scrambled to generate scrambled data in response to determining that the data comprises the data type.

“10. The method of claim 8, comprising: receiving, via the processor, wherein the data comprises a header portion and the payload portion; and maintaining, via the processor, the header portion as part of the scrambled data.

“11. The method of claim 8, wherein the input indicates a type of the data, a size of the data, a company associated with the data, or any combination thereof, and wherein determining that the data comprises the one or more characteristics comprises determining that the one or more characteristics correlate to the input.

“12. The method of claim 8, wherein scrambling the data comprises randomizing at least a portion of the data.

“13. The method of claim 8, wherein determining that the data comprises the one or more characteristics comprises comparing image capture data representative of the data to a reference image.

“14. The method of claim 8, wherein the one or more characteristics comprise a password, a date of a birthday, an account number, or any combination thereof.

“15. The method of claim 8, wherein the one or more characteristics comprise geo-fencing data.

“16. A tangible, non-transitory, machine-readable medium comprising instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising: determining a time range when data was captured by one or more electronic sensor devices; determining one or more data types of the data captured by the one or more electronic sensor devices; determining that the data captured by the one or more electronic sensor devices disposed within a property comprises one or more characteristics characterized as sensitive information associated with a property owner of the property based on the time range and the one or more data types; scrambling a payload portion of the data to generate scrambled data in response to determining that the data is associated with the property owner; and transmitting the scrambled data to a third-party device.

“17. The tangible, non-transitory, machine-readable medium of claim 16, wherein the instructions that cause the processor to perform the operations comprising determining that the data is associated with the property owner of the property comprises comparing image data representative of the data to reference image.

“18. The tangible, non-transitory, machine-readable medium of claim 16, wherein the instructions that cause the processor to perform the operations comprising determining that the data is associated with the property owner of the property comprises comparing audio data representative of the data to reference audio data.

“19. The tangible, non-transitory, machine-readable medium of claim 18, wherein the reference audio data comprises information categorized by the property owner as being sensitive information.

“20. The tangible, non-transitory, machine-readable medium of claim 16, wherein the time range corresponds to when the property owner is at home.”

For more information, see this patent: Pena, Ric M. Systems and methods for selectively scrambling data. U.S. Patent Number 11741260, filed July 31, 2020, and published online on August 29, 2023. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(11741260)&db=USPAT&type=ids

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