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Encyclopedia of GIS pp 93–97Cite as

Cloaking Algorithms for Location Privacy

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Synonyms

Location blurring; Location perturbation; Location anonymization; Privacy; Location‐privacy; Anonymity; Location-based services; Nearest neighbor; Peer to peer

Definition

Spatial cloaking is a technique to blur a user's exact location into a spatial region in order to preserve her location privacy. The blurred spatial region must satisfy the user's specified privacy requirement. The most widely used privacy requirements are k-anonymity and minimum spatial area. The k-anonymity requirement guarantees that a user location is indistinguishable among k users. On the other hand, the minimum spatial area requirement guarantees that a user's exact location must be blurred into a spatial region with an area of at least \( \mathcal{A} \), such that the probability of the user being located in any point within the spatial region is \( \frac{1}{\mathcal{A}} \). A user location must be blurred by a spatial cloaking algorithm either on the client side or a trusted third-party before it is...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Chi-Yin Chow

Authors
  1. Chi-Yin Chow
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA

    Shashi Shekhar (McKnight Distinguished University Professor) (McKnight Distinguished University Professor)

  2. Management Science and Information Systems Department, Rutgers Business School Newark and New Brunswick Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Newark, NJ, 07102, USA

    Hui Xiong (Assistant Professor) (Assistant Professor)

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© 2008 Springer-Verlag

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Chow, CY. (2008). Cloaking Algorithms for Location Privacy. In: Shekhar, S., Xiong, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of GIS. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35973-1_136

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