Abstract

The growing popularity of Location-Based Services, allowing for the collection of huge amounts of information regarding users’ locations, has started raising serious privacy concerns. In this survey we analyze the various kinds of privacy breaches that may arise in connection with the use of location-based services, and we consider and compare some of the mechanisms and the metrics that have been proposed to protect the user’s privacy, focusing in particular on the comparison between probabilistic spatial obfuscation techniques.

Methods for Location Privacy: A comparative overview

In recent years, the growing popularity of mobile devices equipped with GPS chips, in combination with the increasing availability of wireless data connections, has led to an incremental rise in the use of Location-Based Services (LBSs), namely applications in which a user obtains, typically in real-time, a service related to his current location. The growing popularity of location-based services, allowing for the collection of vast amounts of information regarding users’ location, has started raising serious privacy concerns.

Methods for Location Privacy: A Comparative Overview examines the various kinds of privacy breaches that may arise due to the use of LBSs, and considers and compares some of the mechanisms and the metrics that have been proposed to protect user privacy, focusing in particular on a comparison between probabilistic spatial obfuscation techniques.