Privacy in Location-Based Services: Present Facts and Future Paths

The usage of Location-Based Services (LBSs) ranges from searching points of interests to location-based social networking. They are present in almost every daily task. Moreover, with smartphone ownership growth, getting one’s location became easier, and the privacy-related issues became almost inescapable. Accordingly, numerous efforts have extensively explored the problem from different perspectives. Many of the existing solutions lack rigorous privacy safeguards and have been foiled by several location attacks. In a nutshell, their shortcomings are mainly due to the heavy dependence on computational privacy models, and the lack of consideration for adaptable protections. We discuss in this paper the current location-based services models, privacy issues, a general overview of the protection mechanisms, and our thoughts about location-privacy in the near future.