skip to main content
10.1145/1967486.1967517acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesiiwasConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Air-Writing: a platform for scalable, privacy-preserving, spatial group messaging

Published: 08 November 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Spatial messaging is a direct extension to text and other multi-media messaging services that have become highly popular with the current pervasiveness of mobile communication. It offers benefits especially to mobile computing, providing localised and therefore potentially more appropriate delivery of nearly arbitrary content. Location is one of the most interesting attributes that can be added to messages in current applications, including gaming, social networking, or advertising services. However, location is also highly critical in terms of privacy. If a spatial messaging platform could collect the location traces of all its users, detailed profiling would be possible -- and, considering commercial value of such profiles, likely. In this paper, we present Air-Writing, an approach to spatial messaging that fully preserves user privacy while offering global scalability, different client interface options, and flexibility in terms of application areas. We contribute both an architecture and a specific implementation of an attribute based messaging platform with special support for spatial messaging and rich clients for J2ME, Google Android, and Apple iPhone. The centralised client/server approach utilises groups for anonymous message retrieval and client caching and filtering as well as randomised queries for obscuring traces. An initial user study with 20 users shows that the overall concept is easily understandable and that it seems useful to end-users. An analysis of real-world and simulated location traces shows that user privacy can be ensured, but with a trade-off between privacy protection and consumed network resources.

References

[1]
Mobithinking web page. http://mobithinking.com/sites/mobithinking.com/files/dotMobi_and_AKQA_Mobile_Usage_and_Attitudes_Study.pdf, 2008.
[2]
Nielsen web page. http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/in-us-text-messaging-tops-mobile-phone-calling/, 2008.
[3]
R. Ballagas, S. G. Kratz, J. O. Borchers, E. Yu, S. P. Walz, C. O. Fuhr, L. Hovestadt, and M. Tann. REXplorer: a mobile, pervasive spell-casting game for tourists. In M. B. Rosson and D. J. Gilmore, editors, Proc. CHI 2007, pages 1929--1934. ACM, April 2007.
[4]
I. Buhan, J. Doumen, P. Hartel, and R. Veldhuis. Secure ad-hoc pairing with biometric: SAfE. In Proc. IWSSI 2007, pages 450--456, September 2007.
[5]
J. Burrell and G. Gay. E-graffiti: evaluating real-world use of a context-aware system. Interacting with Computers, 14(4):301--312, 2002.
[6]
S. Counts. Group-based mobile messaging in support of the social side of leisure. Comput. Supported Coop. Work, 16(1--2):75--97, 2007.
[7]
R. Dingledine, N. Mathewson, and P. Syverson. Tor: The second-generation onion router. In Proc. USENIX 2004, pages 303--320, 2004.
[8]
P. Froehlich, R. Simon, E. Muss, A. Stepan, and P. Reichl. Envisioning future mobile spatial applications. In People and Computers XXI. British HCI, 2007.
[9]
B. Gedik and L. Liu. Protecting location privacy with personalized k-anonymity: Architecture and algorithms. IEEE Trans. Mob. Comput, 7(1):1--18, 2008.
[10]
M. Gruteser and D. Grunwald. Anonymous usage of location-based services through spatial and temporal cloaking. In MobiSys. USENIX, 2003.
[11]
M. Hazas, C. Kray, H. Gellersen, H. Agbota, G. Kortuem, and A. Krohn. A relative positioning system for co-located mobile devices. In Proc. MobiSys 2005, pages 177--190. ACM Press, June 2005.
[12]
C. L. B. III, D. R. Raymond, and T. L. Martin. Location privacy for users of wireless devices through cloaking. In HICSS, page 295. IEEE Computer Society, 2008.
[13]
H. Kido, Y. Yanagisawa, and T. Satoh. Protection of location privacy using dummies for location-based services. In ICDE Workshops, page 1248, 2005.
[14]
J. Krumm. Inference attacks on location tracks. In Proc. Pervasive 2007, volume 4480 of LNCS, pages 127--143. Springer-Verlag, May 2007.
[15]
R. Mayrhofer. Towards an open source toolkit for ubiquitous device authentication. In Workshops Proc. PerCom 2007: 5th IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications, pages 247--252. IEEE CS Press, March 2007. Track PerSec 2007: 4th IEEE International Workshop on Pervasive Computing and Communication Security.
[16]
W. Narzt, G. Pomberger, A. Ferscha, D. Kolb, R. Müller, H. Hörtner, and R. Haring. Addressing concepts for mobile location-based information services. In C. Stephanidis, editor, Proc. UAHCI 2007, volume 4555 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 507--516. Springer, July 2007.
[17]
G. Peng. CDN: Content distribution network. CoRR, cs.NI/0411069, 2004. informal publication.
[18]
P. Persson, F. Espinoza, P. Fagerberg, A. Sandin, and R. Caester. Geonotes: A location-based information system for public spaces. In Readings in Social Navigation of Information Space. 2002.
[19]
H. A. Rahemtulla, M. Haklay, and P. A. Longley. A mobile spatial messaging service for a grassroots environmental network. J. Locat. Based Serv., 2(2):122--152, 2008.

Cited By

View all
  • (2012)Air‐Writing: a platform for scalable, privacy‐preserving, spatial group messagingInternational Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications10.1108/174273712112210818:1(53-78)Online publication date: 30-Mar-2012

Recommendations

Reviews

Anoop kumar Malaviya

In this paper, the authors describe a scalable platform for spatial group messaging, based on a client/server model, that would preserve the participants' privacy. Here, the term "privacy" implies participant anonymity. The authors have based the privacy measures on Krumm's spatial cloaking method, where the success of the privacy algorithm is based on interference attacks encountered. Similarly, the term "scalability" implies the size of the participant group. With this platform, the receiver selects the message of interest from a pool of available messages for the participant group. Typically, a message is characterized by group ID, text, longitude and latitude of the receiver, radius in meters defining the spatial scope, start and end date of the message as set by the server, amount of messages in the pool set by the server, and encryption as defined by the participant. As the authors see it, the issues facing this platform include privacy safeguarding, secure messaging, protection against cheating, and protection against denial of service. The suggested implementation uses PostgreSQL, PostGIS, the Spring Framework, and the Tapestry 5 Framework on the server back-end, and purpose-built client software. The authors claim to have successfully addressed the listed issues. This is a well-written paper, though it does not provide enough trial data or setup metadata to verify the authors' claims. I fail to understand the motivation behind the development of this platform except for some amusement. A seriously successful implementation would address public security concerns, and the police, telecom providers, and other public administration authorities would need to seriously examine it. Online Computing Reviews Service

Access critical reviews of Computing literature here

Become a reviewer for Computing Reviews.

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
iiWAS '10: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Information Integration and Web-based Applications & Services
November 2010
895 pages
ISBN:9781450304214
DOI:10.1145/1967486
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

  • IIWAS: International Organization for Information Integration
  • Web-b: Web-b

In-Cooperation

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 08 November 2010

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. location privacy
  2. spatial group communication

Qualifiers

  • Research-article

Conference

iiWAS '10
Sponsor:
  • IIWAS
  • Web-b

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)3
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1
Reflects downloads up to 13 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2012)Air‐Writing: a platform for scalable, privacy‐preserving, spatial group messagingInternational Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications10.1108/174273712112210818:1(53-78)Online publication date: 30-Mar-2012

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media