Privacy in trajectory data

Abstract

In this era of significant advances in telecommunications and GPS sensors technology, a person can be tracked down to proximity of less than 5 meters. This remarkable progress enabled the offering of services that depend on user location (the so-called location-based services-LBSs), as well as the existence of applications that analyze movement data for various purposes. However, without strict safeguards, both the deployment of LBSs and the mining of movement data come at a cost of privacy for the users, whose movement is recorded. This chapter studies privacy in both online and offline movement data. After introducing the reader to this field of study, we review state-of-the-art work for location and trajectory privacy both in LBSs and in trajectory databases. Then, we present a qualitative evaluation of these works, pointing out their strengths and weaknesses. We conclude the chapter by providing our point of view regarding the future trends in trajectory data privacy. © 2009, IGI Global.