An anonymous communication technique using dummies for location-based services

Abstract

Recently, highly accurate positioning devices enable us to provide various types of location-based services. On the other hand, because such position data include deeply personal information, the protection of location privacy is one of the most significant problems in location-based ser- vices. In this paper, we propose an anonymous communi- cation technique to protect the location privacy of the users of location-based services. In our proposed technique, such users generateseveralfalse positiondata(dummies)to send to service providers with the true position data of users. Be- cause service providers cannot distinguish the true position data, user location privacy is protected. We also describe a cost reduction technique for communication between a client and a server. Moreover, we conducted performance study experiments on our proposed technique using practi- cal position data. As a result of the experiments, we ob- served that our proposed technique protects the location privacy of people and can sufficiently reduce communica- tion costs so that our communication techniques can be ap- plied in practical location-based services.