Privacy-Preserving ID-Based Service Provision in Ubiquitous Computing Environments

Abstract

Privacy preservation is vital because a lot of privacy-sensitive information can be collected and distributed in the ubiquitous computing environment.[1] The anonymity-based approach is one of well-known ones for privacy preservation, which allows users to use pseudonyms when they join in a service area of the ubiquitous computing environment in order to hide the users’ identity (ID). [2,3] This paper proposes an architecture to enable ID-based services in the anonymity-based platform. The architecture employs the so-called white page agent which maintains the current pseudonyms of users and thus allows users to get the pseudonyms of other users. Although the white page agent maintains the pseudonyms of users, it is enforced not to disclose the association of users’ real ID with their pseudonyms by adopting security protocols.