ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 25 -- United States Patent no. 12,719,674, issued on Aug. 25, was assigned to Thunes Financial Services LLC (Singapore).

"Systems and methods to secure searchable data having personally identifiable information" was invented by Nicolas J. Scheiblauer (Santa Cruz, Calif.), Aaron Torres (Tukwila, Wash.) and Christopher Allen Nowell (Calgary, Canada).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method implemented in a computing system hosting a three-dimensional virtual reality world. The computer system stores a set of searchable records, each having: a searchable hash of at least a portion of personally identifiable information; and an encrypted identity, decryptable using an encrypti...