Privacy protection in WiFi-based location estimation

In recent years, along with the spread of WiFi-based location estimation service, the privacy problem has been pointed out. For existing WiFi-based location estimation service, users´ traces and position information can be obtained fraudulently. Personal privacy may be compromised. This research proposes an algorithm that determines the reliability of the user by considering the probability of both spatial and temporal to resolve the privacy problem in WiFi-based location estimation. Meanwhile, we are operating a portal Locky.jp on location estimation using WiFi. Based on the actual data of base stations stored in the Locky.jp database, we confirm this algorithm. As a result, the percentage of returning position for privacy invasion data and whole data (privacy invasion data is also included) are about 20% and 55% respectively. In summary, we know that this algorithm reduced the privacy invasion to about 20% in the WiFi-based location estimation system.