A peer-to-peer spatial cloaking algorithm for anonymous location-based service

Abstract

This paper tackles a major privacy threat in current location-based services where users have to report their exact locations to the database server in order to obtain their desired services. For example, a mobile user asking about her nearest restaurant has to report her exact location. With untrusted service providers, reporting private location information may lead to several privacy threats. In this paper, we present a peer-to-peer (P2P)spatial cloaking algorithm in which mobile and stationary users can entertain location-based services without revealing their exact location information. The main idea is that before requesting any location-based service, the mobile user will form a group from her peers via single-hop communication and/or multi-hop routing. Then,the spatial cloaked area is computed as the region that covers the entire group of peers. Two modes of operations are supported within the proposed P2P s patial cloaking algorithm, namely, the on-demand mode and the proactive mode. Experimental results show that the P2P spatial cloaking algorithm operated in the on-demand mode has lower communication cost and better quality of services than the proactive mode, but the on-demand incurs longer response time. Copyright 2006 ACM.