A Step towards User Privacy while Using Location-Based Services

Abstract

Nowadays mobile users are using a popular service called Location-BasedServices (LBS). LBS is very helpful for a mobile user in finding various Point of Interests(POIs) in their vicinity. To get these services, users must provide their personal information,such as user identity or current location, which severely risks the location privacy of theuser. Many researchers are developing schemes that enable a user to use these LBSservices anonymously, but these approaches have some limitations (i.e., either theprivacy prevention mechanism is weak or the cost of the solution is too much). As such,we are presenting a robust scheme for mobile users that allows them to use LBSanonymously. Our scheme involves a client side application that interacts with anuntrusted LBS server to find the nearest POI for a service required by a user. Thescheme is not only efficient in its approach, but is also very practical with respect to thecomputations that are done on a client’s resource constrained device. With our scheme,not only can a client anonymously use LBS without any use of a trusted third party, butalso a server’s database is completely secure from the client. We performed experimentsby developing and testing an Android-based client side smartphone application tosupport our argument.