A Context-Sensitive Privacy-Aware Framework for Proactive Location-Based Services

Abstract

The recent years have seen a vast growth of location-based services (LBS) usage with the ubiquity of smart mobile devices. While reactive LBS act on the user's request, proactive LBS notify the user proactively of relevant location-specific content in case a dedicated area is entered. The usage scenarios of proactive LBS vary from location-based reminders to location-based marketing. With the increasing popularity of LBS also privacy concerns are raised, reclaiming the whereabouts of a user worth protecting. This is especially true for proactive LBS as they constantly share the location of the mobile device with the service and hence continuously track the user's location in order to act proactively. This paper introduces a context-sensitive privacy-awareness framework for mobile devices which enables mobile device users to individually define different privacy preferences for different contexts. It is intended to give the user full control over her/his sensitive location information to allow the user to determine whenever and wherever the user's location is allowed to be shared with 3rd party applications or services. As a proof of concept, a prototypical implementation is presented which enforces the user's context-sensitive privacy settings on mobile devices during the use of proactive LBS.