An authentication system in which an image forming apparatus authenticates a user, the authentication system includes: an obtainer that obtains, from a terminal apparatus, a mail address of, and security information on, the user; a verificator that verifies the security information at a verification point identified with the mail address; and an authenticator that authenticates the user if the security information is able to be verified correctly.

Techniques are disclosed in which a computer system receives, from a plurality of user computing devices, a plurality of device-trained models and obfuscated sets of user data stored at the plurality of user computing devices, where the device-trained models are trained at respective ones of the plurality of user computing devices using respective sets of user data prior to obfuscation. In some embodiments, the server computer system determines similarity scores for the plurality of device-trained models, wherein the similarity scores are determined based on a performance of the device-trained models. In some embodiments, the server computer system identifies, based on the similarity scores, at least one of the plurality of device-trained models as a low-performance model. In some embodiments, the server computer system transmits, to the user computing device corresponding to the low-performance model, an updated model.

Techniques for identifying certain types of network activity are disclosed, including parsing of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) to identify a plurality of key-value pairs in a query string of the URL. The plurality of key-value pairs may include one or more potential anonymous identifiers. In an example embodiment, a machine learning algorithm is trained on the URL to determine whether the one or more potential anonymous identifiers are actual anonymous identifiers (i.e., advertising identifiers) that provide advertisers a method to identify a user device without using, for example, a permanent device identifier. In this embodiment, a ranking threshold is used to verify the URL. A verified URL associate the one or more potential anonymous identifiers with the user device as actual anonymous identifiers. Such techniques may be used to identify and eliminate malicious and/or undesirable network traffic.

A mobile robot is configured for operation in a commercial or industrial setting, such as an office building or retail store. The mobile robot may include cameras for capturing images and videos and include microphones for capturing audio of its surroundings. To improve privacy by preventing confidential information from being transmitted, the mobile robot may detect text in images and modify the images to make the text illegible before transmitting the images. The mobile robot may also detect human voice in audio and modify audio to make the human voice unintelligible before transmitting the audio.

A method in a virtual private network (VPN) environment, the method including receiving, at a processor associated with a device, domain information associated with a VPN service provider; determining, by the processor, substitute domain information based at least in part on determining that the VPN service provider is unreachable via utilization of the domain information, the determining the substitute domain information being based at least in part on utilizing a time marker and a string of alphanumeric characters associated with the VPN service provider; and transmitting, by the processor, a connection request to reach the VPN service provider by utilizing the substitute domain information. Various other aspects are contemplated.

Aspects of subject technology provide systems and methods for generation and distribution of a stable identifier associated with multiple aliases of a user account. The stable identifier may be provided to various electronic devices by a server, responsive to requests associated with communications to those devices from one of the associated aliases. In this way, messaging applications can utilize the stable identifier to merge conversations from a single user having multiple aliases, and secure access to a secure device can be provided to an authorized user, even if the authorized user attempts access from an unauthorized account alias.

A method may include receiving, from a first client, a first message. The first message may be matched to a second user based on a similarity between a first keyword included in the first message and a second keyword included in a profile of a second user. The first keyword may be determined to be similar to the second keyword based on a distance between a first vector representation of the first keyword and a second vector representation of the second keyword not exceeding a threshold value. In response to the first message being matched with the second user, the first message may be sent to a second client associated with the second user. In response to receiving, from the second client, a second message responsive to the first message, the second message may be sent to the first client. Related systems and articles of manufacture are also provided.

A blockchain anonymizing system and method is provided for side-channel-secure blockchain anonymity using the Invisible Internet Project (I2P). Instead of merely preventing the revelation of a user's IP address, embodiments are directed to inhibiting any correlation of the user's transactions over time.

Device-side validation of screen recordings is disclosed, including: accessing a screen recording of a user's activities on a client device with respect to a task; performing, at the client device, video validation on the screen recording, including by identifying a characteristic marker associated with the task within the screen recording; and in response to the characteristic marker being identified, sending at least a portion of the screen recording to a compressed version of the screen recording to a server for further processing.

Some of the electronic messages transmitted post-purchase to the purchaser of a gift may include content that is of interest to the gift recipient. However, not all of the content in a message suitable for the purchaser might be suitable for a message to the gift recipient. In some embodiments, content may be obscured in a message for a given recipient. The obscuring may be implemented through at least one of: hiding, omitting, masking/obfuscating, or modifying the content presented. In some embodiments, a message is generated without having regard to the possible message recipients, and includes fields tagged to associate each field with a respective one or more recipients. For each recipient, a message is generated and transmitted in which the content that does not have a tag associated with that recipient is obscured.