Enhancing Location Privacy in Location-Based Services

2013 ◽  
pp. 238-250
Author(s):  
Constantinos Delakouridis
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phones ◽  
Location Privacy ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Mobile User ◽  
Location Based Services ◽  
Location Information ◽  
Position Information ◽  
Privacy Requirements ◽  
Privacy Issues

Location-based services are receiving signification attention over the last few years due to the increasing use of mobile devices. At the same time, location privacy is important, since position information is considered personal information. Thus, in order to address this issue, several mechanisms have been proposed protecting the mobile user. In this chapter, the authors present an architecture to shield the location of a mobile user and preserve the anonymity on the service delivery. This architecture relies on un-trusted entities to distribute segments of anonymous location information, and authorizes other entities to combine these portions and derive the actual location of a user. The chapter describes how the architecture takes into account the location privacy requirements, and how it is used by the end users’ devices, e.g., mobile phones, for the dissemination of location information to service providers. Furthermore, it notes privacy issues for further discussion and closes with proposed exercises.

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 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.

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.

A Survey on Privacy Preservation in Location-Based Mobile Business

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-39
Author(s):  
Ahmed Aloui ◽  
Okba Kazar
Keyword(s):  
Privacy Protection ◽  
Privacy Preservation ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Mobile Business ◽  
Protection Measures ◽  
System Architectures ◽  
Protection Goals ◽  
Privacy Issues

In mobile business (m-business), a client sends its exact locations to service providers. This data may involve sensitive and private personal information. As a result, misuse of location information by the third party location servers creating privacy issues for clients. This paper provides an overview of the privacy protection techniques currently applied by location-based mobile business. The authors first identify different system architectures and different protection goals. Second, this article provides an overview of the basic principles and mechanisms that exist to protect these privacy goals. In a third step, the authors provide existing privacy protection measures.

scholarly journals Complying with Privacy Legislation: From Legal Text to Implementation of Privacy-Aware Location-Based Services

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (11) ◽  
pp. 442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehrnaz Ataei ◽  
Auriol Degbelo ◽  
Christian Kray ◽  
Vitor Santos
Keyword(s):  
Data Privacy ◽  
Location Privacy ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Location Based Services ◽  
Legal Text ◽  
General Data Protection Regulation ◽  
Location Data ◽  
Privacy Laws ◽  
Technical Issues ◽  
General Data

An individual’s location data is very sensitive geoinformation. While its disclosure is necessary, e.g., to provide location-based services (LBS), it also facilitates deep insights into the lives of LBS users as well as various attacks on these users. Location privacy threats can be mitigated through privacy regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which was introduced recently and harmonises data privacy laws across Europe. While the GDPR is meant to protect users’ privacy, the main problem is that it does not provide explicit guidelines for designers and developers about how to build systems that comply with it. In order to bridge this gap, we systematically analysed the legal text, carried out expert interviews, and ran a nine-week-long take-home study with four developers. We particularly focused on user-facing issues, as these have received little attention compared to technical issues. Our main contributions are a list of aspects from the legal text of the GDPR that can be tackled at the user interface level and a set of guidelines on how to realise this. Our results can help service providers, designers and developers of applications dealing with location information from human users to comply with the GDPR.

scholarly journals Decentralized collaborative TTP free approach for privacy preservation in location based services

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 5376
Author(s):  
Ajaysinh Devendrasinh Rathod ◽  
Saurabh Shah ◽  
Vivaksha J. Jariwala
Keyword(s):  
Privacy Preservation ◽  
Location Privacy ◽  
Emergency Services ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Personal Digital Assistant ◽  
Minimum Cost ◽  
Location Based Services ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Trusted Third Party ◽  
Recent Trends

In recent trends, growth of location based services have been increased due to the large usage of cell phones, personal digital assistant and other devices like location based navigation, emergency services, location based social networking, location based advertisement, etc. Users are provided with important information based on location to the service provider that results the compromise with their personal information like user’s identity, location privacy etc. To achieve location privacy of the user, cryptographic technique is one of the best technique which gives assurance. Location based services are classified as Trusted Third Party (TTP) & without Trusted Third Party that uses cryptographic approaches. TTP free is one of the prominent approach in which it uses peer-to-peer model. In this approach, important users mutually connect with each other to form a network to work without the use of any person/server. There are many existing approaches in literature for privacy preserving location based services, but their solutions are at high cost or not supporting scalability.  In this paper, our aim is to propose an approach along with algorithms that will help the location based services (LBS) users to provide location privacy with minimum cost and improve scalability.

scholarly journals Privacy-Enhancing Preferential LBS Query for Mobile Social Network Users

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Madhuri Siddula ◽  
Yingshu Li ◽  
Xiuzhen Cheng ◽  
Zhi Tian ◽  
Zhipeng Cai
Keyword(s):  
Social Networking Sites ◽  
Location Privacy ◽  
Location Based Services ◽  
Sensitive Information ◽  
Context Aware ◽  
Friendship Networks ◽  
Mobile Social Network ◽  
User Privacy ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Privacy Issues

While social networking sites gain massive popularity for their friendship networks, user privacy issues arise due to the incorporation of location-based services (LBS) into the system. Preferential LBS takes a user’s social profile along with their location to generate personalized recommender systems. With the availability of the user’s profile and location history, we often reveal sensitive information to unwanted parties. Hence, providing location privacy to such preferential LBS requests has become crucial. However, the current technologies focus on anonymizing the location through granularity generalization. Such systems, although provides the required privacy, come at the cost of losing accurate recommendations. Hence, in this paper, we propose a novel location privacy-preserving mechanism that provides location privacy through k-anonymity and provides the most accurate results. Experimental results that focus on mobile users and context-aware LBS requests prove that the proposed method performs superior to the existing methods.

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 Improved Recommender for Location Privacy Preferences

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 64
Author(s):  
Anas A. Hadi ◽  
Jonathan Cazalas
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Collaborative Filtering ◽  
Location Privacy ◽  
Integrated Model ◽  
Location Based Services ◽  
Training Data ◽  
Smart Devices ◽  
Privacy Preferences ◽  
Privacy Issues

Location-based services are one of the fastest growing technologies. Millions of users are using these services and sharing their locations using their smart devices. The popularity of using such applications, while enabling others to access user’s location, brings with it many privacy issues. The user has the ability to set his location privacy preferences manually. Many users face difficulties in order to set their preferences in the proper way. One solution is to use machine learning based methods to predict location privacy preferences automatically. These models suffer from degraded performance when there is no sufficient training data. Another solution is to make the decision for the intended user, depending on the collected opinions from similar users. <em>User-User Collaborative Filtering (CF)</em> is an example within this category. In this paper, we will introduce an improved machine learning based predictor. The results show significant improvements in the performance. The accuracy was improved from 75.30% up to 84.82%, while the privacy leak was reduced from 11.75% up to 7.65%. We also introduced an integrated model which combines both machine learning based methods and collaborative filtering based methods in order to get the advantages from both of them.

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.

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