A Study Of Probability-Based Location Privacy Protection Algorithm

Continued advances in mobile networks and positioning technologies have created a strong market push for location-based applications. Examples include location-aware emergency response, location-based social network ing services, and location-based entertainment. As location-based services(LBSs) require users to report location information, without safeguards, extensive deployment of LBSs endangers user’s location privacy. Existing techniques usually require frequent location updates from all users, regardless of whether or not these users are requesting LBSs. However, those who request nothing have no duty to upload their current locations. To solve this problem, two probability-base location privacy protection algorithms are proposed:1. Probability-base Location k-Anonymity(PLKA) algorithm. The inspiration comes from the road network in which a user must move along the roads. O n the surface, there is no regularity in the movement of a single user. But when we put eyes on the set of users, they show some regularity. In addition, a sequence of a user’s position should represent Markov property which means that a user’s position at time t only depends on its position at time t?1. In light of these observations, we intend to figure out the distribution characteristics of the users in the anonymity area based on their historical location data. The anonymity area is significantly decreased at the the cost of a little decrease in security.2. Probability-base Segment Anonymity(PSA) algorithm. The conception of section anonymity is proposed and we take advantage of section obfuscation instead of area obfuscation to protect user’s location privacy. We figure out the distribution characteristics of the users in the anonymity area based on their historical location data. Similar to PLKA, PSA can achieve a relatively small anonymity section at the the cost of a little decrease in security.In order to test the performance of our algorithms, we simulate the scenario of user’s querying LBSs in road networks. We exploit the proposed algorithms to conduct location anonymity. A series of experiments show that our methods can both significantly tracking the quality of services and provide high cloaking success rate.