A Multi-Path Approach for k-Anonymity in Mobile Hybrid Networks

The ubiquitous proliferation of mobile devices has given rise to novel user-centric applications and services. In current mobile systems, users gain access to remote service providers over mobile network operators which are assumed to be trusted and not improperly use or disclose users’ information. In this paper, we remove this assumption, offering privacy protection of users’ requests again the prying eyes of the network operators, which we consider to be honest but curious. Furthermore, to prevent abuse of the communication privacy we provide, we elevate traffic accountability as a primary design requirement. We build on prior work on network k-anonymity and multi-path communications to provide communications’ anonymity in a mobile environment. The resulting system protects users’ privacy while maintaining data integrity and accountability. To verify the effectiveness of our approach and measure its overhead, we implemented a prototype of our system using WiFi-enabled devices. Our preliminary results indicate that the overall impact on the end-to-end latency is negligible, thus ensuring applicability of our solution to protect the privacy of real-time services including video streaming and voice activated services.