Preserving privacy in location-based services using sudoku structures

Abstract

With the prevalence of ubiquitous computing and the increase in the number of mobile phone and smartphone users, multiple features and applications are being introduced to facilitate users’ daily life. However, users are unaware of the potential danger when the data is collected in return by the service providers. Users and the data associated with them are vulnerable to privacy attacks and threats. The concerning issue has been of interest to many researchers and several techniques have been proposed to counteract such threat and vulnerability issues. This paper proposes a new technique using Sudoku structures and shows how it can ensure users’ privacy and degrade the confidence level at the adversary’s end for tracking the user. In the proposed scheme, the service providers can be customized for varying needs of the user and in accordance with the types of queries. As a simple yet effective technique, it can create reasonable obfuscation for the adversary while guaranteeing accuracy of service for the users.