Model of Location-Sharing-Based Services with Privacy Guarantee

The mobile devices can perform many tasks including the processing of complex calculations, reproduction of high quality media and connection with the Internet. These tasks enable many new services to users which explore their locations in order to provide, for instance, information about the weather forecast, traffic monitoring, among others. Services which use information about location of users are called Location-Based Services (LBS). These services can also group users according to the geographical region and they are called Location-Sharing-Based Services(LSBS). The main feature of LSBS is that it explores the information from a group of users and not just from individuals, offering services based on the group position. However, with these services, users are subject to several threats to their privacy. This article presents the implementation of a model of LSBS with privacy guarantees. The model is based on levels and it guarantees not only the privacy of the group but also the privacy of each one inside the group. This guarantee is due to homomorphic encryption and privacy techniques like anonymity. Tests were performed aiming at developing this model. The results show that it is viable the use of model of LSBS in real devices.