Near-pri: Private, proximity based location sharing
Title | Near-pri: Private, proximity based location sharing |
Publication Type | Conference Paper |
Year of Publication | 2014 |
Authors | Novak, E., Qun Li |
Conference Name | INFOCOM, 2014 Proceedings IEEE |
Date Published | April |
Keywords | Android application, cryptography, Facebook, Facebook online social network, homomorphic encryption, Lead, location based services, location based systems, location information sensitivity, location value representation, mobile computing, Near-Pri, polynomials, privacy, private proximity based location sharing, private proximity testing, Protocols, smart phones, smartphone ubiquity, social networking (online), user location information privacy, Vegetation |
Abstract | As the ubiquity of smartphones increases we see an increase in the popularity of location based services. Specifically, online social networks provide services such as alerting the user of friend co-location, and finding a user's k nearest neighbors. Location information is sensitive, which makes privacy a strong concern for location based systems like these. We have built one such service that allows two parties to share location information privately and securely. Our system allows every user to maintain and enforce their own policy. When one party, (Alice), queries the location of another party, (Bob), our system uses homomorphic encryption to test if Alice is within Bob's policy. If she is, Bob's location is shared with Alice only. If she is not, no user location information is shared with anyone. Due to the importance and sensitivity of location information, and the easily deployable design of our system, we offer a useful, practical, and important system to users. Our main contribution is a flexible, practical protocol for private proximity testing, a useful and efficient technique for representing location values, and a working implementation of the system we design in this paper. It is implemented as an Android application with the Facebook online social network used for communication between users. |
DOI | 10.1109/INFOCOM.2014.6847922 |
Citation Key | 6847922 |
- Near-Pri
- Vegetation
- user location information privacy
- social networking (online)
- smartphone ubiquity
- smart phones
- Protocols
- private proximity testing
- private proximity based location sharing
- privacy
- polynomials
- Android application
- mobile computing
- location value representation
- location information sensitivity
- location based systems
- location based services
- Lead
- Homomorphic encryption
- Facebook online social network
- Cryptography