1. A method for searching for a particular string among a plurality of prefix preserving compressed strings, the method comprising: identifying a plurality of strings at a data collection site; inputting the plurality of strings into a compression engine at the data collection site; converting each of the plurality of strings into a new, prefix-preserving compressed string, using the compression engine, wherein for every string P that is a strict prefix of a string S, P's resulting compressed string is a strict prefix of S's resulting compressed string; and compressing the search string and applying a search algorithm to find the resulting compressed string among the plurality of compressed strings.