Title: Privacy protection of location-based services in mobile big data environments

Authors: Huilan Yang; Dawei Sun; Chunxiao Liu

Addresses: School of Information Engineering, China University of Geosciences, Beijing 100083, China ' School of Information Engineering, China University of Geosciences, Beijing 100083, China ' College of Information Science and Technology, Bohai University, Jinzhou, Liaoning 121013, China

Abstract: The development of mobile devices and the popularity of wireless networks promote the emergence and development of mobile social networks. Thus, Location-Based Services (LBS) have become more and more widely used. LBS can bring a lot of entertainment and benefit to individuals and society, but it is also a huge threat to users' privacy. Users are required to provide their locations and query attributes, which easily expose users' sensitive information in the era of big data, such as family location, personal interests, health, etc. This paper provides a preview to the research and progress of privacy protection of LBS in mobile big data environment. First, the paper presents the concept and classifies the current privacy protection of LBS according to the application services, including three categories. Then, a more detailed classification for each type of existing research work is made. Next, a focus discussion is placed on the privacy protection based on check-in services. Through analysis and comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of various types of technology, it is pointed out that the research of privacy protection of LBS in mobile big data environments is a big problem now. Finally, frontier issues and future research directions of this field are provided.

Keywords: mobile big data; privacy protection; trajectory privacy; query privacy; location privacy; privacy preservation; location-based services; LBS; wireless networks; mobile networks.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWMC.2016.079458

International Journal of Wireless and Mobile Computing, 2016 Vol.11 No.1, pp.10 - 17

Received: 30 Apr 2016
Accepted: 16 Jun 2016
Published online: 28 Sep 2016 *

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