Cross Domain Privacy Protection for Location-Based Services

Network operators gradually open their interfaces to formerly hidden services that foster the development of a new class of mobile applications which are operated by 3 party providers and take into account context information such as the user’s location. As a result, the inclusion of the network operators’ infrastructure provides many new possibilities and the potential to change the way in which mobile devices are used in everyday life. However, this development raises important issues such as the protection of the users location information and privacy while using location-based services. In this paper we illustrate a service architecture together with a novel and flexible privacy enhancing mechanism that allows the realization of the highly postulated pay-as-you-go model for location-based services. We further specify mobile applications that operate on the exchange of location information even between different network operators while still meeting mandatory legal requirements.