I-Corps: iCloak: Privacy Preserving Individual Location Sharing

由于位置信息经常用于基于位置的应用程序，移动用户对隐私泄露的担忧不断升级。目前的移动操作系统仅为用户提供最小的访问控制，要么阻止，要么允许位置访问，这在减轻隐私威胁方面是无效和低效的。客户被迫放弃他们的位置隐私以换取使用基于位置的服务，或者为了保护他们的位置而放弃基于位置的服务。在这个项目中，I-Corps团队调查并实现了一个新的可定制和严格的隐私机制（应用程序），它允许移动用户共享一个隐藏的（近似的）位置，而不会损害其基于位置的应用程序的效用。这项拟议中的技术为移动用户提供了一种简单的方式来定制他们的隐私设置，比如何时何地以何种精度共享位置。通过这种方式，手机用户将受益于基于位置推荐和社交网络的附加功能，从而保护隐私。位置服务提供商和智能手机制造商也可以整合这种隐私保护技术，加强对用户隐私的保护。提议的机制（应用程序）为用户提供了一个严格和可定制的隐私框架，以便与其他第三方（例如基于位置的服务提供商，或基于位置的社交网络中的其他用户）共享他们的位置。隐私保障基于差分隐私，这是最先进的隐私保护框架，它确保即使知道用户的移动模式或用户可能出现的所有可能位置，攻击者仍然无法找出用户的真实位置。另一方面，隐蔽的位置也保证了基于位置的应用程序的最佳效用（最小错误），例如，找到最近的餐馆或朋友。此外，基于用户的历史位置信息，该机制还可以根据用户的移动模式和朋友的兴趣进行个性化的位置推荐。该项目有望在为移动用户提供隐私保护的基于位置的应用程序方面产生重大而广泛的影响。

As location information is frequently used for location based applications, mobile users' fear of privacy breach continues to escalate. Current mobile operating systems only provide users with minimal access control, either to block or allow location access, which are ineffective and inefficient in mitigating the privacy threats. Customers are forced to give up their location privacy in exchange for use of location based services or give up location based services in order to protect their location. In this project, the I-Corps team investigates and implements a new customizable and rigorous privacy mechanism (app) which allows mobile users to share a cloaked (approximate) location without deteriorating its utility for location based applications. The proposed technology provides mobile users an easy way to customize their privacy settings, such as when and where to share locations with what precision. In this way, mobile users will benefit from privacy-preserving location sharing with added functionalities of location-based recommendations and social networking. Location service providers and smartphone manufacturers can also integrate this privacy-preserving technique to enhance the privacy protection for users.The proposed mechanism (app) provides a rigorous and customizable privacy framework for users to share their locations with other third parties (e.g. location based service providers, or other users in location based social networks). The privacy guarantee is based on differential privacy, the state-of-art framework for privacy protection, which ensures that even given the knowledge of the user's moving patterns or all possible locations where the user may appear, an attacker still cannot figure out the true location of the user. The cloaked location, on the other hand, also guarantees optimal utility (minimal error) for location based applications, e.g., finding nearest restaurants or friends. In addition, with a user's historical locations, the proposed mechanism can also make personalized location based recommendations according to the user's moving pattern and interest of friends. The project promises significant broader impacts on enabling location based applications with privacy protection for mobile users.