Protecting User's Privacy in Location-based Services

Abstract

The use of location-based services (LBSs) is a prevalent phenomenon among many users who use mobile devices and the internet at large. The purpose of LBSs has made life leisurely as it offers a platform to share ideas and comments. Also, it eases the navigation from one place to other using maps. The main issue for most location service providers is to guarantee users’ privacy while offering location services. Previous literature has employed K-anonymity mechanism either in a centralized or decentralized system. However, centralizing the operations means that the system will utilize the anonymizing server for location cloaking, and this will become tricky as the number of users increases. LBSs have a drawback because they are at risk of attack. Location-based privacy is an issue that most users pursue while using location services. This paper seeks to identify the different user privacy protection strategies that location service providers use to guarantee the privacy of the users.