Privacy preserving through a memorizing algorithm in location-based services

Abstract

Along with the rapid development of mobile devices having embedded positioning technology, location-based services have become more and more popular. In order to use the services, users often disclose some parts of their private information, especially their location-related information. Thus, it raises a great concern in the users' privacy preserving in location-based services. This paper proposes a solution with a memorizing algorithm working on a trusted middleware. With the proposed solution, the space is organized in a flexible grid and the middleware cloaks the user's location information in an anonymization area before sending it to the service providers. A concerned problem is that overlapped areas among anonymization areas can be used to explore the true position of a user because the overlapped areas have a higher probability of having a user. Our newly introduced memorizing algorithm calculates on the spatial grid to decrease the overlapped areas as much as possible. The solution aims at protecting the user's privacy not only at the time using the service but also against data mining techniques wrt. their history location data. Experimental results with synthesis moving objects over real world maps will establish our theoretical analyses as well as the practical value of the proposed solution.