Privacy Protection in Location-Based Services Through a Public-Key Privacy Homomorphism

Location-Based Services (LBS) can be accessed from a variety of mobile devices to obtain value added information related to the location of the user. Most of the times, these services are provided by a trusted company (e.g. a telecommunications company). However, the massive use of mobile devices pave the way for the creation of ad hoc wireless networks that can be used to exchange information based on locations. In the latter case, these LBS could be provided by an untrusted party. Sending the location to an untrusted LBS provider could put the privacy of the user in jeopardy. In this paper we propose a novel technique to guarantee the privacy of users of LBS. Our technique consists of several modules, but the highest degree of security is achieved thanks to the use of a public-key privacy homomorphism. Unlike the existing approaches, our proposal does not need any trusted third party to anonymise the users and only makes use of a public-key infrastructure.