Security and Privacy in Location-Based Services for Vehicular and Mobile Communications: An Overview, Challenges and Countermeasures

Location-based Services (LBS) have gained popularity as a result of the advances in mobile and communication technologies. LBS provide users with relevant information based on their location. In spite of the desirable features provided by LBS, the geographic location of users are not adequately protected. Location privacy is one of the major challenges in vehicular and mobile networks. In this article, we analyse the security and privacy requirements for LBS in vehicular and mobile networks. Specifically, this paper covers privacy enhancing technologies and cryptographic approaches that provide location privacy in vehicular and mobile networks. The different approaches proposed in literature are compared and open research areas are identified