Towards trajectory anonymization: a generalization-based approach

  • Authors:
  • Mehmet Ercan Nergiz;Maurizio Atzori;Yucel Saygin

  • Affiliations:
  • Sabanci Univ.;KDD Lab., ISTI-CNR;Sabanci Univ.

  • Venue:
  • SPRINGL '08 Proceedings of the SIGSPATIAL ACM GIS 2008 International Workshop on Security and Privacy in GIS and LBS
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

Trajectory datasets are becoming more and more popular due to the massive usage of GPS and other location-based devices and services. In this paper, we address privacy issues regarding the identification of individuals in static trajectory datasets. We provide privacy protection by definig trajectory k-anonymity, meaning every released information refers to at least k users/trajectories. We propose a novel generalization-based approach that applies to trajectories and sequences in general. We also suggest the use of a simple random reconstruction of the original dataset from the anonymization, to overcome possible drawbacks of generalization approaches. We present a utility metric that maximizes the probability of a good representation and propose trajectory anonymization techniques to address time and space sensitive applications. The experimental results over synthetic trajectory datasets show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.