Privacy Protection for LBS in Mobile Environments: Progresses, Issues and Challenges

In recent years, mainly driven by the availability of modern mobile devices with cheap integrated position sensors, location based services (LBS) have become more and more popular. Prominent examples are nearest friends finding in mobile social networks and the points of interest finders such as the nearest gas stations, hospitals, or places of interests etc. However, the users’ privacy information such as location is threatened, when users enjoy the convenience and effectiveness provided by such location services. Therefore, how to secure users’ privacy information must be taken into consideration. Many different approaches have been proposed to protect users’ identity, location and so on. This paper reviews and analyzes existing privacy protection research works from an integrated perspective, gives the LBS category from two views, and discusses the challenges of securing privacy information. Lastly, our suggestions for future research works are presented.