Evaluation of Geocoding Algorithms for Generalization-based Location Privacy

Pedro Wightman, Paul Sanmartin-Mendoza, Augusto Salazar

Research output: Chapter in Book/InformConference contribution

Abstract

Many different smartphone applications are constantly tracking users, including individual locations and full trajectories. This information can contain sensitive information about the users that can be inferred by their whereabouts. One way to protect the user's location is generalizing it, which consists of reducing the precision of the information so that it does not reflect the original location. Some of the existing techniques require a complex implementation that will consume computational power. This work explores the use of geocoding techniques, with information precision control, like Geohash and H3, and also proposes a new tool, based on directly generalizing decimal coordinates, named GenDec. The experiments measure data loss and distortion over a 300-point segment of a biking path. Results show that, even though all techniques indeed provide a good generalization-based protection, the jumps between scales can be very high, while GenDec can tailor the level of granularity in between scales. In addition, the location repel option of GenDec preserves a minimum noise from the original location, offering an extra protection layer. Results show that GenDed produces generalized paths that maintain path distortion and data loss, while allowing users to determine the desired level of distance, compared to H3, and in a more stable way than Geohash.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2024 IEEE Colombian Conference on Communications and Computing, COLCOM 2024 - Proceedings
EditorsDiana Z. Briceno Rodriguez
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
ISBN (Electronic)9798331504724
DOIs
StatePublished - 2024
Event2024 IEEE Colombian Conference on Communications and Computing, COLCOM 2024 - Barranquilla, Colombia
Duration: Aug 21 2024Aug 24 2024

Publication series

Name2024 IEEE Colombian Conference on Communications and Computing, COLCOM 2024 - Proceedings

Conference

Conference2024 IEEE Colombian Conference on Communications and Computing, COLCOM 2024
Country/TerritoryColombia
CityBarranquilla
Period8/21/248/24/24

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
  • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

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