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A trajectory privacy-preserving scheme based on query exchange in mobile social networks

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Abstract

With the increase in the number of active location-based service (LBS) users, protecting the privacy of user trajectory has become a significant concern. In this paper, we propose a deviation-based query exchange (DQE) scheme that obfuscates the users’ query point to mitigate trajectory disclosure in mobile social networks (MSNs). The user finds a best matching user (BMU) in an MSN to exchange queries when a query request is issued. The DQE scheme can prevent the attacker from reconstructing the user’s trajectory by collecting data from the LBS server which records only the user’s ID and his BMUs’ locations (fake locations). By virtue of the private matching algorithm based on the matrix confusion, the DQE scheme allows LBS users to enjoy the service while preserving their privacy. In order to test the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed scheme, we carried out extensive security and performance analyses under various conditions. The results of the experiments show that the proposed DQE scheme can protect users’ trajectory privacy effectively and reduce the overhead of the LBS server.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 61632009, 61472451 and 61402161, the High Level Talents Program of Higher Education in Guangdong Province under Grant No. 2016ZJ01, the Hunan Provincial Education Department of China under Grant No. 2015C0589, the Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 2015JJ3046, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of Central South University under Grant No. 2016zzts058.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Science and Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, China

    Shaobo Zhang

  2. School of Computer Science and Engineering, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan, 411201, China

    Shaobo Zhang

  3. School of Computer Science and Educational Software, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, 510006, China

    Guojun Wang

  4. College of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, China

    Qin Liu

  5. School of Information Technology, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC, 3220, Australia

    Jemal H. Abawajy

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  1. Shaobo Zhang
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  2. Guojun Wang
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  3. Qin Liu
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  4. Jemal H. Abawajy
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Correspondence to Guojun Wang.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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Communicated by V. Loia.

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Zhang, S., Wang, G., Liu, Q. et al. A trajectory privacy-preserving scheme based on query exchange in mobile social networks. Soft Comput 22, 6121–6133 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-017-2676-6

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