Preserving user privacy in location-aware systems: A protocol for privacy-preservation in location-aware systems

Abstract

This thesis main goal is to address issues which lies within location-awareness, concerning the privacy of the users.As smart-phones and other devices used for location-awareness are becom- ing more and more common among the normal consumers, safe handling of this new information they introduces becomes increasingly important. This thesis focuses on privacy concerns which lies within the handling of location- information about users.This thesis presents a authorization-scheme for handling the privacy of the users regarding location-data, where the users are the one authorizing the systems which are allowed to handle its data. Cryptography is used as the information carrier of these authorizations.This authorization-scheme is realized within the Telepresence-domain in a system creating a location-aware-profile-management service. This system is designed, implemented and tested, with a comprehensive security-analysis regarding the design and the actual implementation was performed.