scholarly journals Location Based Services for Sharing Using Trusted Server

2020 ◽  
pp. 68-73
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Location Privacy ◽  
Location Based Services ◽  
Location Information ◽  
Location Based Service ◽  
Privacy Concerns ◽  
Computational Overhead ◽  
Location Sharing ◽  
Current Location ◽  
Cryptographic Primitive

The main aim of location-sharing is to provide current location information to their designated users. Nowadays, Location Based Service (LBS) has become one of the popular services which are provided by social networks. As LBS activity makes use of the user's identity and current location information, an appropriate path has to be utilized to protect the location privacy. However, as per our knowledge, there is no access to protecting the location sharing with the complete privacy of the location. To consider this issue, we put forward a new cryptographic primitive functional pseudonym for location sharing that make sure privacy of the data. Also, the proposed approach notably reduces the computational overhead of users by delegating part of the computation for location sharing to a server, therefore it is endurable. The primitive can be widely used in many MOSNs to authorize LBS with enhanced privacy and sustainability. As a result, it will contribute to proliferate LBS by eliminating user's privacy concerns.

scholarly journals Privacy vs. Reward in Indoor Location-Based Services

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (4) ◽  
pp. 102-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kassem Fawaz ◽  
Kyu-Han Kim ◽  
Kang G. Shin
Keyword(s):  
Location Privacy ◽  
Indoor Localization ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Location Based Services ◽  
Location Information ◽  
Privacy Concerns ◽  
Indoor Location ◽  
Location Data ◽  
Personalized Services ◽  
Privacy Risks

AbstractWith the advance of indoor localization technology, indoor location-based services (ILBS) are gaining popularity. They, however, accompany privacy concerns. ILBS providers track the users’ mobility to learn more about their behavior, and then provide them with improved and personalized services. Our survey of 200 individuals highlighted their concerns about this tracking for potential leakage of their personal/private traits, but also showed their willingness to accept reduced tracking for improved service. In this paper, we propose PR-LBS (Privacy vs. Reward for Location-Based Service), a system that addresses these seemingly conflicting requirements by balancing the users’ privacy concerns and the benefits of sharing location information in indoor location tracking environments. PR-LBS relies on a novel location-privacy criterion to quantify the privacy risks pertaining to sharing indoor location information. It also employs a repeated play model to ensure that the received service is proportionate to the privacy risk. We implement and evaluate PR-LBS extensively with various real-world user mobility traces. Results show that PR-LBS has low overhead, protects the users’ privacy, and makes a good tradeoff between the quality of service for the users and the utility of shared location data for service providers.

scholarly journals Toward Addressing Location Privacy Issues: New Affiliations with Social and Location Attributes

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vgena ◽  
Kitsiou ◽  
Kalloniatis ◽  
Kavroudakis ◽  
Gritzalis
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Information Disclosure ◽  
Location Privacy ◽  
Location Information ◽  
Sensitive Information ◽  
Privacy Concerns ◽  
Location Sharing ◽  
Privacy Issues ◽  
Different Levels

Nowadays, location-sharing applications (LSA) within social media enable users to share their location information at different levels of precision. Users on their side are willing to disclose this kind of information in order to represent themselves in a socially acceptable online way. However, they express privacy concerns regarding potential malware location-sharing applications, since users’ geolocation information can provide affiliations with their social identity attributes that enable the specification of their behavioral normativity, leading to sensitive information disclosure and privacy leaks. This paper, after a systematic review on previous social and privacy location research, explores the overlapping of these fields in identifying users’ social attributes through examining location attributes while online, and proposes a targeted set of location privacy attributes related to users’ socio-spatial characteristics within social media.

scholarly journals Nonexposure Accurate LocationK-Anonymity Algorithm in LBS

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinying Jia ◽  
Fengli Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Privacy Protection ◽  
Location Privacy ◽  
Location Based Services ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Location Information ◽  
User Privacy ◽  
Spatial Region ◽  
Exact Location ◽  
Current Location ◽  
Location Privacy Protection

This paper tackles location privacy protection in current location-based services (LBS) where mobile users have to report their exact location information to an LBS provider in order to obtain their desired services. Location cloaking has been proposed and well studied to protect user privacy. It blurs the user’s accurate coordinate and replaces it with a well-shaped cloaked region. However, to obtain such an anonymous spatial region (ASR), nearly all existent cloaking algorithms require knowing the accurate locations of all users. Therefore, location cloaking without exposing the user’s accurate location to any party is urgently needed. In this paper, we present such two nonexposure accurate location cloaking algorithms. They are designed forK-anonymity, and cloaking is performed based on the identifications (IDs) of the grid areas which were reported by all the users, instead of directly on their accurate coordinates. Experimental results show that our algorithms are more secure than the existent cloaking algorithms, need not have all the users reporting their locations all the time, and can generate smaller ASR.

scholarly journals A Location Privacy Attack Based on the Location Sharing Mechanism with Erroneous Distance in Geosocial Networks

Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 918 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tu-Liang Lin ◽  
Hong-Yi Chang ◽  
Sheng-Lin Li
Keyword(s):  
Location Privacy ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Dominating Set ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Location Based Services ◽  
Location Information ◽  
Distance Information ◽  
Space Partition ◽  
Location Sharing ◽  
True Location

Geographical social networks (GSN) is an emerging research area. For example, Foursquare, Yelp, and WeChat are all well-known service providers in this field. These applications are also known as location-based services (LBS). Previous studies have suggested that these location-based services may expose user location information. In order to ensure the privacy of the user’s location data, the service provider may provide corresponding protection mechanisms for its applications, including spatial cloaking, fuzzy location information, etc., so that the user’s real location cannot be easily cracked. It has been shown that if the positioning data provided by the user is not accurate enough, it is still difficult for an attacker to obtain the user’s true location. Taking this factor into consideration, our attack method is divided into two stages for the entire attack process: (1) Search stage: cover the area where the targeted user is located with unit discs, and then calculate the minimum dominating set. Use the triangle positioning method to find the minimum precision disc. (2) Inference phase: Considering the existence of errors, an Error-Adjusted Space Partition Attack Algorithm (EASPAA) was proposed during the inference phase. Improved the need for accurate distance information to be able to derive the user’s true location. In this study, we focus on the Location Sharing Mechanism with Maximal Coverage Limit to implement the whole attack. Experimental results show that the proposed method still can accurately infer the user’s real location even when there is an error in the user’s location information.

scholarly journals Location-sharing protocol for privacy protection in mobile online social networks

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ou Ruan ◽  
Lixiao Zhang ◽  
Yuanyuan Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Private Information ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Location Based Services ◽  
Broadcast Encryption ◽  
Location Sharing ◽  
Identity Privacy ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Network Server

AbstractLocation-based services are becoming more and more popular in mobile online social networks (mOSNs) for smart cities, but users’ privacy also has aroused widespread concern, such as locations, friend sets and other private information. At present, many protocols have been proposed, but these protocols are inefficient and ignore some security risks. In the paper, we present a new location-sharing protocol, which solves two issues by using symmetric/asymmetric encryption properly. We adopt the following methods to reduce the communication and computation costs: only setting up one location server; connecting social network server and location server directly instead of through cellular towers; avoiding broadcast encryption. We introduce dummy identities to protect users’ identity privacy, and prevent location server from inferring users’ activity tracks by updating dummy identities in time. The details of security and performance analysis with related protocols show that our protocol enjoys two advantages: (1) it’s more efficient than related protocols, which greatly reduces the computation and communication costs; (2) it satisfies all security goals; however, most previous protocols only meet some security goals.

ILSSPP: Intelligent location sharing system with privacy preserving features for smart cities

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Gokay Saldamli ◽  
Richard Chow ◽  
Hongxia Jin
Keyword(s):  
Service Providers ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
User Interaction ◽  
Privacy Preserving ◽  
Location Based Services ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Location Information ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Location Sharing ◽  
Social Network Structure

Social networking services are increasingly accessed through mobile devices. This trend has prompted services such as Facebook and Google+to incorporate location as a de facto feature of user interaction. At the same time, services based on location such as Foursquare and Shopkick are also growing as smartphone market penetration increases. In fact, this growth is happening despite concerns (growing at a similar pace) about security and third-party use of private location information (e.g., for advertising). Nevertheless, service providers have been unwilling to build truly private systems in which they do not have access to location information. In this paper, we describe an architecture and a trial implementation of a privacy-preserving location sharing system called ILSSPP. The system protects location information from the service provider and yet enables fine grained location-sharing. One main feature of the system is to protect an individual’s social network structure. The pattern of location sharing preferences towards contacts can reveal this structure without any knowledge of the locations themselves. ILSSPP protects locations sharing preferences through protocol unification and masking. ILSSPP has been implemented as a standalone solution, but the technology can also be integrated into location-based services to enhance privacy.

scholarly journals Enabling Location Privacy Preservation in MANETs Based on Distance, Angle, and Spatial Cloaking

Electronics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 458
Author(s):  
Nanlan Jiang ◽  
Sai Yang ◽  
Pingping Xu
Keyword(s):  
Privacy Preservation ◽  
Location Privacy ◽  
Differential Privacy ◽  
Geographic Routing ◽  
Base Station ◽  
Wireless Channel ◽  
Location Based Services ◽  
Location Information ◽  
Communication Overhead ◽  
Spatial Cloaking

Preserving the location privacy of users in Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) is a significant challenge for location information. Most of the conventional Location Privacy Preservation (LPP) methods protect the privacy of the user while sacrificing the capability of retrieval on the server-side, that is, legitimate devices except the user itself cannot retrieve the location in most cases. On the other hand, applications such as geographic routing and location verification require the retrievability of locations on the access point, the base station, or a trusted server. Besides, with the development of networking technology such as caching technology, it is expected that more and more distributed location-based services will be deployed, which results in the risk of leaking location information in the wireless channel. Therefore, preserving location privacy in wireless channels without losing the retrievability of the real location is essential. In this paper, by focusing on the wireless channel, we propose a novel LPP enabled by distance (ranging result), angle, and the idea of spatial cloaking (DSC-LPP) to preserve location privacy in MANETs. DSC-LPP runs without the trusted third party nor the traditional cryptography tools in the line-of-sight environment, and it is suitable for MANETs such as the Internet of Things, even when the communication and computation capabilities of users are limited. Qualitative evaluation indicates that DSC-LPP can reduce the communication overhead when compared with k-anonymity, and the computation overhead of DSC-LPP is limited when compared with conventional cryptography. Meanwhile, the retrievability of DSC-LPP is higher than that of k-anonymity and differential privacy. Simulation results show that with the proper design of spatial divisions and parameters, other legitimate devices in a MANET can correctly retrieve the location of users with a high probability when adopting DSC-LPP.

scholarly journals An Efficient and Privacy-Preserving Multiuser Cloud-Based LBS Query Scheme

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lu Ou ◽  
Hui Yin ◽  
Zheng Qin ◽  
Sheng Xiao ◽  
Guangyi Yang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Location Privacy ◽  
Security Analysis ◽  
Privacy Preserving ◽  
Location Based Services ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Location Information ◽  
User Privacy ◽  
User Revocation ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Cloud Infrastructures

Location-based services (LBSs) are increasingly popular in today’s society. People reveal their location information to LBS providers to obtain personalized services such as map directions, restaurant recommendations, and taxi reservations. Usually, LBS providers offer user privacy protection statement to assure users that their private location information would not be given away. However, many LBSs run on third-party cloud infrastructures. It is challenging to guarantee user location privacy against curious cloud operators while still permitting users to query their own location information data. In this paper, we propose an efficient privacy-preserving cloud-based LBS query scheme for the multiuser setting. We encrypt LBS data and LBS queries with a hybrid encryption mechanism, which can efficiently implement privacy-preserving search over encrypted LBS data and is very suitable for the multiuser setting with secure and effective user enrollment and user revocation. This paper contains security analysis and performance experiments to demonstrate the privacy-preserving properties and efficiency of our proposed scheme.

scholarly journals Privacy preservation in mobile social networks

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Douglas Steiert
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Social Networking ◽  
Privacy Preservation ◽  
Location Based Services ◽  
Mobile Social Networks ◽  
Privacy Concerns ◽  
Average Person ◽  
Effectiveness And Efficiency ◽  
Privacy Breaches

In this day and age with the prevalence of smartphones, networking has evolved in an intricate and complex way. With the help of a technology-driven society, the term "social networking" was created and came to mean using media platforms such as Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter to connect and interact with friends, family, or even complete strangers. Websites are created and put online each day, with many of them possessing hidden threats that the average person does not think about. A key feature that was created for vast amount of utility was the use of location-based services, where many websites inform their users that the website will be using the users' locations to enhance the functionality. However, still far too many websites do not inform their users that they may be tracked, or to what degree. In a similar juxtaposed scenario, the evolution of these social networks has allowed countless people to share photos with others online. While this seems harmless at face-value, there may be times in which people share photos of friends or other non-consenting individuals who do not want that picture viewable to anyone at the photo owner's control. There exists a lack of privacy controls for users to precisely de fine how they wish websites to use their location information, and for how others may share images of them online. This dissertation introduces two models that help mitigate these privacy concerns for social network users. MoveWithMe is an Android and iOS application which creates decoys that move locations along with the user in a consistent and semantically secure way. REMIND is the second model that performs rich probability calculations to determine which friends in a social network may pose a risk for privacy breaches when sharing images. Both models have undergone extensive testing to demonstrate their effectiveness and efficiency.

scholarly journals Towards Region Queries with Strong Location Privacy in Mobile Network

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Songtao Yang ◽  
Qingfeng Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Location Privacy ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Security Analysis ◽  
Mobile Network ◽  
Sensitive Information ◽  
Location Based Service ◽  
Cryptographic Primitive ◽  
The Common ◽  
Query Semantics ◽  
The Relationship

With the interaction of geographic data and social data, the inference attack has been mounting up, calling for new technologies for privacy protection. Although there are many tangible contributions of spatial-temporal cloaking technologies, traditional technologies are not enough to resist privacy intrusion. Malicious attackers still steal user-sensitive information by analyzing the relationship between location and query semantics. Reacting to many interesting issues, oblivious transfer (OT) protocols are introduced to guarantee location privacy. To our knowledge, OT is a cryptographic primitive between two parties and can be used as a building block for any arbitrary multiparty computation protocol. Armed with previous privacy-preserving technologies, for example, OT, in this work, we first develop a novel region queries framework that can provide robust privacy for location-dependent queries. We then design an OT-assist privacy-aware protocol (or OTPA) for location-based service with rigorous security analysis. In short, the common query of the client in our solution can be divided into two parts, the region query R q and the content query C q , to achieve location k -anonymity, location m -diversity, and query r -diversity, which ensure the privacy of two parties (i.e., client and server). Lastly, we instantiate our OTPA protocol, and experiments show that the proposed OTPA protocol is reasonable and effective.

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