Abstract: This disclosure relates to personalized and dynamic server-side searching techniques for encrypted data. Current so-called ‘zero-knowledge’ privacy systems (i.e., systems where the server has ‘zero-knowledge’ about the client data that it is storing) utilize servers that hold encrypted data without the decryption keys necessary to decrypt, index, and/or re-encrypt the data. As such, the servers are not able to perform any kind of meaningful server-side search process, as it would require access to the underlying decrypted data. Therefore, such prior art ‘zero-knowledge’ privacy systems provide a limited ability for a user to search through a large dataset of encrypted documents to find critical information.

Abstract: This disclosure relates to systems, methods, and computer readable media for performing multi-format, multi-protocol message threading in a way that is most beneficial for the individual user. Users desire a system that will provide for ease of message threading by “stitching” together related communications in a manner that is seamless from the user's perspective. Such stitching together of communications across multiple formats and protocols may occur, e.g., by: 1) direct user action in a centralized communications application (e.g., by a user clicking ‘Reply’ on a particular message); 2) using semantic matching (or other search-style message association techniques); 3) element-matching (e.g., matching on subject lines or senders/recipients/similar quoted text, etc.); and 4) “state-matching” (e.g., associating messages if they are specifically tagged as being related to another message, sender, etc. by a third-party service, e.g., a webmail provider or Instant Messaging (IM) service).

Abstract: Disclosed are apparatuses, methods, and computer readable media for improved message presentation to a user with respect to correlation of messages in a multi-participant message thread. Conversational awareness may be determined by analyzing contents of individual messages and assigning them to an existing context or creating a new context. Association of messages to contexts allows for grouping related messages related to their subject matter. Further, analysis of individual users within a multi-party communication stream (e.g., a thread with a group of participants) can be used to report previous and predict future user activity of a specific user. Groups of different sizes have been determined to sometimes have different participation dynamics. For example, people communicate differently in small groups versus large groups and within a given group, individual participation dynamics can be further analyzed. Disclosed systems learn and leverage this communication dynamic.

Abstract: Users desire a system that provides for the setting of custom, content-agnostic, permissions at a message, document, and/or sub-document-level through a communications network. Such a system may also allow the user to apply customized privacy settings and encryption keys differently to particular parts of a document. Customized encryption keys may be applied to particular parties (or groups of parties) to enhance the security of the permissions settings. In the case of structured document file types, dynamically-rendered content can present a challenge to accurately display to viewers, because one or more of the document's values referred to by the dynamically-rendered content may be encrypted or otherwise unavailable to the recipient—even though the dynamically-rendered content itself is viewable by the recipient.

Abstract: Disclosed are apparatuses, methods, and computer readable media for improved intelligent personal assistant (IPA) software agents that are configured to interact with various people, service providers, and/or smart devices across multiple connection protocols, communications formats, and communication protocols in a seamless and more accurate fashion. More particularly, but not by way of limitation, this disclosure relates to apparatuses, methods, and computer readable media for an improved Message Understanding Service (MUS) that is able to match generic user commands and queries (i.e., commands and queries that are not explicitly directed to a particular service endpoint or smart device) with the service endpoint(s) that have the greatest confidence level of being able to handle the generic command or query.

Abstract: Disclosed are systems to apply customized permission settings to protect particular portions of a document, and, in particular, documents that are of bitstream datatypes, encoded or not encoded, e.g., an audio filetype such as the MP3 audio format. The custom access permission settings may be implemented by obfuscating the protected portions of the original bitstream and then embedding “secret,” e.g., hidden and/or encrypted, versions of the obfuscated portions in parts of the data structure of the original file, e.g., in the form of “layers” that are held within audio stream containers such as channels. The content of the individual encrypted audio stream containers may then be decrypted according to each recipient's permissions and layered on top of the obfuscated portions of the encoded media file before being rendered to the recipient.

Abstract: This disclosure relates to systems, methods, and computer readable media for performing multi-format, multi-protocol personalized searching in a manner that is most beneficial for the individual user. Personalized searching can be achieved by obtaining a plurality of data objects for a first user. The data objects can exist in a wide variety of formats and can be received via a number of protocols. One or more message objects can be created for each of the data objects, according to a standardized format and stored. The universal message objects can be indexed in a manner that is personal to the user, and in accordance with one or more parameters that can be updated on an ongoing or periodic basis, in accordance with the actions of the user, or any combination thereof.

Abstract: Users desire a communications system that allows the users to apply customized privacy settings (and, optionally, encryption keys) differently to particular portions of a document—even if the document is of a ‘lossy’ file type, e.g., a JPEG image. The custom access permission settings may be implemented by obfuscating portions of the original file and then embedding “secret,” e.g., hidden and/or encrypted, versions of the obfuscated portions in parts of the data structure of the original lossy file in the form of “layers” (e.g., the bit-equivalent of PNG layers). The individual encrypted layers may then be decrypted according to each recipient's permissions and layered on top of the original lossy file ‘in memory’ before being displayed to the recipient. The use of multiple encrypted layers allows for the visual revelation of the content of the original lossy file without modifying the actual underlying image content of the original lossy file.

Abstract: An application program interface (API) analyzer that determines protocols and formats to interact with a service provider or smart device. The API analyzer identifies an API endpoint or web sites for the service provider or smart device, determines a service category or device category, selects a category-specific corpus, forms a service-specific or device-specific corpus by appending information regarding the service provider or smart device to the category-specific corpus, and parses API documentation or the websites.

Abstract: Disclosed are systems to apply customized permission settings to protect particular portions of a document, and, in particular, documents that are of bitstream datatypes containing multiple channels of audio, encoded or not encoded. The custom access permission settings may be implemented by obfuscating the protected portions of the original bitstream and then embedding “secret,” e.g., hidden and/or encrypted, versions of the obfuscated portions in parts of the data structure of the original file, e.g., in the form of “layers” that are held within audio stream containers such as channels. The content of the individual encrypted audio stream containers may then be decrypted according to each recipient's permissions and layered on top of the obfuscated portions of the encoded media file before being rendered to the recipient.

Abstract: This disclosure relates to systems, methods, and computer readable media for performing multi-format, multi-protocol message threading in a way that is most beneficial for the individual user. Users desire a system that will provide for ease of message threading by “stitching” together related communications in a manner that is seamless from the user's perspective. Such stitching together of communications across multiple formats and protocols may occur, e.g., by: 1) direct user action in a centralized communications application (e.g., by a user clicking ‘Reply’ on a particular message); 2) using semantic matching (or other search-style message association techniques); 3) element-matching (e.g., matching on subject lines or senders/recipients/similar quoted text, etc.); and 4) “state-matching” (e.g., associating messages if they are specifically tagged as being related to another message, sender, etc. by a third-party service, e.g., a webmail provider or Instant Messaging (IM) service).

Abstract: Disclosed are systems to apply customized permission settings to protect particular regions of a document, and, in particular, documents that are of a ‘lossy’ encoded media file type, e.g., an MPEG video format. The custom access permission settings may be implemented by obfuscating the protected regions of the original file and then embedding “secret,” e.g., hidden and/or encrypted, versions of the obfuscated regions in parts of the data structure of the original file, e.g., in the form of “layers” that are held within video stream containers. The content of the individual encrypted video stream containers may then be decrypted according to each recipient's permissions and layered on top of the obfuscated regions of the encoded media file before being displayed to the recipient. In some embodiments, additional layers of video may be used to reduce the appearance of aliasing around borders of the protected regions of the encoded media file.

Abstract: Techniques disclosed herein decouple a document's structure from its general content wherein the structure is retained in plaintext (both at a client device and in a server system) and the data is retained in cyphertext, and where the cloud-based server system is not tasked with the saving or management of the relevant cryptographic keys. Because the network- or cloud-based server system has “zero-knowledge” about the document's data content or the relevant cryptographic keys, an attack on the server system does not put the security of the document's data at risk. In addition, the network- or cloud-based server system may be used to perform the computationally intensive tasks of converting the document between a first format (often associated with a full-function document processing application not supported by the client device) and a second format (easily displayed and manipulated by a client device).

Abstract: A universal interaction platform that communicates with service providers and smart devices by receiving a message object that includes information indicative of a user intent for one of the service providers or smart devices to perform a function, determines the service provider or smart device that the user intends to perform the function, determines a protocol and format for communicating with the service provider or smart device, formats an instruction for the service provider or smart device, and outputs the instruction to the service provider or smart device.

Abstract: A zero-trust network and methods of using same are disclosed. The network includes a plurality of nodes, some of which are user devices, such as mobile phones, some of which are computer servers. One or more of the nodes includes a directory system. When a server receives an access request by a user device or other node, the directory system is notified of the request. The directory system will contact a number of randomly selected nodes, and if any one of the nodes does not recognize the requesting device, the requesting device will be denied access. If every queried node is able to authenticate the requesting device, the directory system creates a session for the first device to access the server. The directory system can grant access by providing the server and device reciprocating keys. After the session ends, the accessed node is assigned a new identifier.

Abstract: Techniques disclosed herein decouple a document's structure from its general content wherein the structure is retained in plaintext (both at a client device and in a server system) and the data is retained in cyphertext, and where the cloud-based server system is not tasked with the saving or management of the relevant cryptographic keys. Because the network- or cloud-based server system has “zero-knowledge” about the document's data content or the relevant cryptographic keys, an attack on the server system does not put the security of the document's data at risk. In addition, the network- or cloud-based server system may be used to perform the computationally intensive tasks of converting the document between a first format (often associated with a full-function document processing application not supported by the client device) and a second format (easily displayed and manipulated by a client device).

Abstract: Disclosed are systems to apply customized permission settings to protect particular regions of a document, and, in particular, documents that are of a lossy? encoded media file type, e.g., an MPEG video format. The custom access permission settings may be implemented by obfuscating the protected regions of the original file and then embedding “secret,” e.g., hidden and/or encrypted, versions of the obfuscated regions in parts of the data structure of the original file, e.g., in the form of “layers” that are held within video stream containers. The content of the individual encrypted video stream containers may then be decrypted according to each recipient's permissions and layered on top of the obfuscated regions of the encoded media file before being displayed to the recipient. In some embodiments, additional layers of video may be used to reduce the appearance of aliasing around borders of the protected regions of the encoded media file.

Abstract: The proliferation of personal computing devices in recent years, especially mobile personal computing devices, combined with a growth in the number of widely-used communications formats has led to increased concerns regarding the safety and security of documents and messages that are sent over networks. Users desire a system that provides for the setting of custom access permissions at a file-level or sub-file-level. Such a system may allow the user to apply customized privacy settings (and, optionally, encryption keys) differently to particular portions of a document—even if the document is of a ‘lossy’ file type, e.g., a JPEG image. According to some embodiments, the custom access permission settings may be implemented by obfuscating portions of the original file and then embedding “secret,” e.g., hidden and/or encrypted, versions of the obfuscated portions in parts of the data structure of the original lossy file before transmitting the file to the desired recipients.

Abstract: The proliferation of personal computing devices in recent years, especially mobile personal computing devices, has led to increased concerns regarding the safety and security of documents and messages that are sent over networks. Users desire a system that provides for the setting of custom, content-agnostic, permissions at a message, document, and/or sub-document-level through communications networks. Such a system may allow users to apply customized privacy settings and encryption keys differently to particular parts of documents and/or messages. Such a system may also allow the user to manipulate outgoing message objects of pre-existing formats, so as to “hide” the encrypted document and/or message content within one or more portions of the message object that are not displayed in existing message viewer applications, e.g., metadata fields or unused headers. As such, only authorized message viewing applications may know where to look for (and have the necessary keys to decrypt) such hidden content.

Abstract: This disclosure relates generally to apparatus, methods, and computer readable media for composing communications for computing devices across multiple formats and multiple protocols. More particularly, but not by way of limitation, this disclosure relates to apparatus, methods, and computer readable media to permit computing devices, e.g., smartphones, tablets, laptops, and the like, to send communications in a number of pre-determined and/or ‘determined-on-the-fly’ communications formats and/or protocols at one or more determined delivery times via a single, seamless user interface. The determined delivery time of any message to any recipient may be intelligently determined individually for each recipient, e.g., by using one or more context factors to assess optimal delivery times for each recipient.