Efficient and Privacy-Preserving Dynamic Spatial Query Scheme for Ride-Hailing Services

With the prosperity of mobile internet and the pervasiveness of location-aware mobile terminals, online ride-hailing, a high-level location-based service (LBS) which relies on dynamic spatial query, has made our life more convenient. However, the flourish of ride-hailing service still faces many severe challenges since users’ location privacy and service provider's data security. In this paper, we present an efficien t and p r ivacy-preserving dyn a mi c spatial qu e ry scheme (TRACE) for ride-hailing service. With TRACE, users (i.e., consumers and vehicles) can access ride-hailing service without divulging their sensitive location information, meanwhile, the ride-hailing server can achieve the necessary commercial operating information while keeping its sensitive data (i.e., the space division information) confidential. Specifically, with two proposed efficient and secure spatial query algorithms, named FSSQ and ESVQ, all location-related data are encrypted by its owner before being sent out, and are calculated without decryption during the spatial query process. Therefore, consumers, vehicles, and service provider cannot obtain each other's sensitive information. Detailed security analysis shows that TRACE can resist various known security threats. Furthermore, TRACE is implemented in the real environment, and extensive simulation results over smart phones demonstrate that the scheme is highly efficient and can be implemented effectively.