Privacy preserving system for integrated broadcast-broadband services using attribute-based encryption

A number of integrated broadcast-broadband services have recently been launched which allow the viewers to receive the content via the airwaves together with additional information about the content via the Internet. By providing personal preferences viewers can expect more attractive and personalized services. Viewers would be only willing to share their information with providers that they trust. On the other hand, the viewers would like to distribute their preferences as wide as possible so that they can enjoy more interesting and diverse services. In this paper, a privacy preserving system for integrated broadcast-broadband service is proposed. The system allows viewers to share their personal information with service providers that satisfy certain criteria (possess certain attributes). An implementation of the system using a previously proposed attribute-based encryption scheme is given and the computation cost of the system is examined in practice. Using the system, a viewer can safely receive personalized services from a large number of service providers.