Spread Identity to Achieve Location Privacy in Query Search

---

Abstract

In present scenario of 4G, 5G communications and IoT development, Location based services are playing important roles for providing the comfort to the consumers. These services provide the nearest locations or location information, based on the user present location and query being asked for. Multiple times queries being asked from the same user can give access regarding the user’s day to day activities/habits and leakage of any important information related to his job(s)/work. This will make the user vulnerable to cyber/physical attacks by any social commotion. Multiple methods have been proposed to preserve the users’ location privacy. But these methods mostly rely on fixed Trusted Third Party (TTP) and suffer from single point breakdown. For Query privacy few methods have been proposed but is complex for implementation. We propose a novel query privacy method with dynamic allocation of a small group of TTPs which are in the local proximity of the inquirer. In the proposed model, the spread identity concept has been applied to the mobile platform. It has got feature of dynamically selecting a group of people as TTPs, located anywhere in the globe. This dynamic allocation of TTP will give complete query privacy to the user, and at the same time will make more difficult for the hackers to identify the user’s location.

---

Keywords

Trusted Third Party, Spread Identity, Location Based Servers, Query privacy