A model-based analysis of tunability in privacy services

In this paper, we investigate the tunable privacy features provided by Internet Explorer version 6 (IE6), Mix Net and Crowds, by using a conceptual model for tunable security services. A tunable security service is defined as a service that has been explicitly designed to offer various security configurations that can be selected at run-time. Normally, Mix Net and Crowds are considered to be static anonymity services, since they were not explicitly designed to provide tunability. However, as discussed in this paper, they both contain dynamic elements that can be used to utilize the trade-off between anonymity and performance. IE6, on the other hand, was indeed designed to allow end users to tune the level of privacy when browsing the Internet.