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An efficient method for privacy preserving location queries

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Abstract

Recently, the issue of privacy preserving location queries has attracted much research. However, there are few works focusing on the tradeoff between location privacy preservation and location query information collection. To tackle this kind of tradeoff, we propose the privacy persevering location query (PLQ), an efficient privacy preserving location query processing framework. This framework can enable the location-based query without revealing user location information. The framework can also facilitate location-based service providers to collect some information about the location based query, which is useful in practice. PLQ consists of three key components, namely, the location anonymizer at the client side, the privacy query processor at the server side, and an additional trusted third party connecting the client and server. The location anonymizer blurs the user location into a cloaked area based on a map-hierarchy. The map-hierarchy contains accurate regions that are partitioned according to real landforms. The privacy query processor deals with the requested nearest-neighbor (NN) location based query. A new convex hull of polygon (CHP) algorithm is proposed for nearest-neighbor queries using a polygon cloaked area. The experimental results show that our algorithms can efficiently process location based queries.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510006, China

    Yubao Liu, Xiuwei Chen & Zhijie Li

  2. Department of Computer Science, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China

    Zhan Li

  3. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China

    Raymond Chi-Wing Wong

Authors
  1. Yubao Liu
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  2. Xiuwei Chen
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  3. Zhan Li
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  4. Zhijie Li
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  5. Raymond Chi-Wing Wong
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Correspondence to Yubao Liu.

Additional information

Yubao Liu is currently an associate professor with the Department of Computer Science of Sun Yat-Sen University, China. He received his PhD in computer science from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2003, China. He has published more than 30 refereed journal and conference papers. His research interests include database systems, data warehousing and data mining. He is also a member of the China Computer Federation (CCF) and ACM.

Xiuwei Chen received his BEng in 2008 and his MSc in 2010, both from the Department of Computer Science of Sun Yat-Sen University, China. His research interests include databases and data mining.

Zhan Li is a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science in Jinan University, China. She is currently a PhD candidate in the School of Computer Science and Engineering in South China University of Technology, where she received her BEng in computer science in 2000 and her MSc in applied mathematics in 2003. Her research interests include image registration, super resolution image reconstruction, and astronomical image processing.

Zhijie Li received his BEng in 2009 and is a graduate student of the Department of Computer Science of Sun Yat-Sen University, China. His research interests include databases and data mining.

Raymond Chi-WingWong received his BSc,MPhil, and PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in 2002, 2004, and 2008, respectively. He joined the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology as an Assistant Professor in 2008. He has published more than 40 conference and journal papers. His research interests include databases, data mining, and security.

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Liu, Y., Chen, X., Li, Z. et al. An efficient method for privacy preserving location queries. Front. Comput. Sci. 6, 409–420 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-012-2838-8

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