Location Privacy, Its Significance and Methods to Achieve It

Abstract

The advancement in location based services has also lead to the increase in concerns of location privacy. Revealing personal location information can be risky but also advantageous. The consequences of leaked personal location data can be quite adverse. The effects of location privacy invasion and ways to achieve location privacy are a less explored field. This paper presents a concise report of some the ways to overcome privacy issues and threats, and also sheds light upon what drives Location Based Service users to share their personal location information. The paper reviews studies about behavior and attitude of Location Based Service users towards sharing location information which depends upon the nature of the requester, the reason for requirement of location information and also the apt level of detail of location information required. The paper will discuss about methods or schemes for protecting privacy such as anonymity, mix zones and obfuscations. The main focus will be on computational location privacy concerns.