Privacy-preserving data querying with authenticated denial of existence

In one embodiment, a tokenized list holder enables privacy-preserving querying with denial of existence functionality. Both an information requester and the tokenized list holder access related (or identical) tokenizing algorithms to generate tokenized terms based on original terms. Prior to receiving a query for information based on a tokenized query term, the tokenized list holder generates sorted tokenized data terms that are associated with a database. Upon receiving the query, the tokenized list holder determines that the tokenized query term is not included in the sorted tokenized data terms. The tokenized list holder then generates a signed response that specifies a gap in the sorted tokenized data terms to indicate that the information is not included in the database. Advantageously, because neither the query nor the response includes original (i.e., untokenized) terms, the privacy of both the information requester and the database is preserved.