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On the Anonymity of Periodic Location Samples

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Security in Pervasive Computing (SPC 2005)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 3450))

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Abstract

As Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers become a common feature in cell phones, personal digital assistants, and automobiles, there is a growing interest in tracking larger user populations, rather than individual users. Unfortunately, anonymous location samples do not fully solve the privacy problem. An adversary could link multiple samples (i.e., follow the footsteps) to accumulate path information and eventually identify a user.

This paper reports on our ongoing work to analyze privacy risks in such applications. We observe that linking anonymous location samples is related to the data association problem in tracking systems. We then propose to use such tracking algorithms to characterize the level of privacy and to derive disclosure control algorithms.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Winlab / Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 94 Brett Rd, Piscataway, NJ, 08854

    Marco Gruteser & Baik Hoh

Authors
  1. Marco Gruteser
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  2. Baik Hoh
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. DFKI, Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3, D-66123, Saarbrücken, Germany

    Dieter Hutter

  2. Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), Godesberger Allee 185-189, 53175, Bonn, Germany

    Markus Ullmann

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Gruteser, M., Hoh, B. (2005). On the Anonymity of Periodic Location Samples. In: Hutter, D., Ullmann, M. (eds) Security in Pervasive Computing. SPC 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3450. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-32004-3_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-32004-3_19

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-25521-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-32004-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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