A Location Privacy Protection Algorithm Based on Double K-Anonymity in the Social Internet of Vehicles

Abstract

As an emerging complex social network, the Social Internet of Vehicles (SIoV) potentially exposes user location privacy. In this letter, we propose a location privacy protection method based on double <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${k}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -anonymity that hides user locations and request information. The cloud server is introduced as a trusted third party to isolate the direct communication between users and the service provider, while correlation between identities and requests is also reduced by means of a permutation and combination method. Extensive simulations are conducted to demonstrate that the method can protect user location privacy to the greatest extent possible while still ensuring service availability.