Locanyms: Towards Privacy-Preserving Location-Based Services

International audienceRecent advances in geolocated capacities, secure and veri- fied positioning techniques, ubiquitous connectivity, as well as mobile and embedded systems, have led to the develop- ment of a plethora of Location-Based Services (LBS), per- sonalizing the services they deliver according to the location of the user querying the service. However, the widespread use of mobile equipments, with ever increasing availability, precision, performance and connectivity have introduced the creepy feeling of being continuously monitored, in particular by the providers of the LBS. Thus, beyond the benefits they provide, users have started to be worried about the privacy breaches caused by such systems. The main objective of this paper is to discuss the privacy issues raised by LBS and the challenges of implementing privacy-preserving location- aware systems. Moreover, we also give a brief overview of positioning techniques used by LBS and we introduce the novel concept of locanym, which corresponds to a pseudonym linked to a particular location that could be used as a basis for developing privacy-preserving LBS