My home is my secret: concealing sensitive locations by context-aware trajectory truncation
Research output: Contribution to journal › Research article › Contributed › peer-review
Contributors
Abstract
Ever since location-based services and mobile applications collecting data gathered through Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning have become popular, concerns about location privacy have been expressed. Research has shown that human trajectory repositories containing sequences of observed locations ordered in time constitute a rich source for analyzing movement patterns, but they can also reveal sensitive personal information, such as a person’s home address. In this paper, we present a mechanism that protects visits to sensitive locations by suppressing revealing parts of trajectories. Our attack model acknowledges that the course of a trajectory, combined with spatial context information, can facilitate privacy breaches even if sensitive locations have been concealed. Thus, we introduce the concept of k-site-unidentifiability, a specialization of k-anonymity, under which a sensitive location cannot be singled out from a group of at least k sites that the trajectory could have visited. In an experimental study, we show that our method is utility-preserving and protects sensitive locations reliably even in sparsely built environments. As it can process each trajectory independently, individuals may also use our mechanism to enhance their privacy before publishing their trajectories.
Details
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 2496-2524 |
Number of pages | 29 |
Journal | International journal of geographical information science |
Volume | 36 |
Issue number | 12 |
Publication status | Published - 2 Dec 2022 |
Peer-reviewed | Yes |
Externally published | Yes |
External IDs
Scopus | 85131525377 |
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