A NOVEL APPROACH TO SECURE WEB SEARCH: PROXY-QUERY BASED QUERY OBFUSCATION

Web search engines are used by people to access content on the internet. To improve the quality of the information received for individualized web searches, search engines keep query logs. User information, both sensitive and non-sensitive, is included in the query log. The query log can expose a great deal of personal information about a person and raise privacy issues if used against them. To achieve privacy-preserving online search, numerous private web search (PWS) systems have been proposed in recent years. While every PWS system claims to have special features that enable web search privacy (WSP), no study clarifies which properties related to private web searches should be taken into account when developing and implementing a PWS scheme. This article aims to accomplish two things. We introduce a new PWS strategy that employs a proxy-query-based query obfuscation method in the first section of the paper. In PWS research, proxy-query-based query obfuscation is a novel research area. Through proxy queries, it offers an IR tool for information retrieval from web search engines. The suggested system has the obvious benefit of preventing users from actually asking search engines questions in order to retrieve information. The second goal of the article is to identify PWS features and examine contemporary PWS systems in light of these attributes. We examined contemporary and suggested PWS systems based on PWS attributes. The investigation showed that only the suggested PWS design satisfies every requirement. Since existing PWS systems do not meet all PWS requirements, it has been found that they are susceptible to WSP attacks.