Privacy in location-based services: a system architecture perspective

  • Authors:
  • Chi-Yin Chow;Mohamed F. Mokbel

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Minnesota;University of Minnesota

  • Venue:
  • SIGSPATIAL Special
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Location-based services (LBS, for short) are information and entertainment services that are conveniently accessible by mobile users through GPS-enabled portable devices and mobile networks (e.g., 2G/3G cellular telephone and Wi-Fi networks). Examples of LBS include resource finding (e.g., where is my nearest gas station), route finding (e.g., what is the shortest route from my current location to a shopping mall, social networking (e.g., where are my friends), and location-based gaming (e.g., GPS online game). LBS rely mainly on an implicit assumption that mobile users are willing to reveal their private locations. With untrustworthy LBS providers, the revealed private location information could be abused by adversaries. For example, an adversary may infer a user's medical record by knowing that she regularly visits a specialized clinic. There are already several life scenarios that took place where personal GPS locations are abused, e.g., see [8, 27, 28].