Cloaking with footprints to provide location privacy protection in location-based services
AssigneeIowa State University Research Foundation, Inc.
InventorsYing Cai, Ge Xu
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method for using a location-based service while preserving anonymity includes receiving a location associated with a mobile node, receiving an anonymity level associated with the mobile node, computing a region containing the location of the mobile node and a number of footprints based on the anonymity level, wherein each of the footprints from a different user, and providing the region to a location-based service to thereby preserve anonymity of the mobile node. A method also allow a mobile device or its user to specify the anonymity level by selecting a public region consistent with a user's feelings towards desired privacy.
Claims12
A method for providing location-based services while preserving anonymity by continuous cloaking using footprints, the method comprising:
- (a) determining a base trajectory associated with a mobile device, the base trajectory comprising at least two points;
- (b) determining anonymity level, K, associated with the mobile device;
- (c) computing a K-anonymity trajectory using the base trajectory, the anonymity level, and a set of K−1 other trajectories using a computing device, wherein the set of other trajectories includes historical trajectories comprising footprints from other mobile devices to thereby cloak time-series location samples for the mobile device;
- and
- (d) providing the K-anonymity trajectory to a location-based service used by the mobile device to thereby preserve anonymity of the mobile device and provide location privacy protection for the mobile device.
A non-transitory computer readable medium bearing one or more instructions for providing location-based services to a user by cloaking a location using footprints comprising:
- receiving a location associated with a mobile node;
- receiving an anonymity level associated with the mobile node;
- computing a region containing the location of the mobile node and a number of footprints based on the anonymity level, wherein each of the footprints from a different user;
- and
- providing the region to a location-based service to thereby preserve anonymity of the mobile node.
A mobile device for providing location-based services to a user by cloaking an instant location using footprints, the mobile device comprising:
- a cellular transceiver and a global positioning system (gps) receiver such that the mobile device configured to receive a selection of a spatial region from the user;
- a computer associated with the mobile device for computing an anonymity level associated with the user;
- said computer including a database comprising a plurality of footprints, wherein the footprints are different mobile devices' historical location samples;
- and
- wherein said computer configured to compute a region containing the current location of the mobile device and a number of footprints from the database based on the anonymity level to thereby cloak when the user is within the region and to provide the region to a location-based service to thereby preserve anonymity of the mobile device.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.