A fine-grained spatial cloaking scheme for privacy-aware users in Location-Based Services

Abstract—In Location-Based Services (LBSs) mobile users submit location-related queries to the untrusted LBS server to get service. However, such queries increasingly induce pri-vacy concerns from mobile users. To address this problem, we propose FGcloak, a novel fine-grained spatial cloaking scheme for privacy-aware mobile users in LBSs. Based on a novel use of modified Hilbert Curve in a particular area, our scheme effectively guarantees k-anonymity and at the same time provides larger cloaking region. It also uses a parameter σ for users to make fine-grained control on the system overhead based on the resource constraints of mobile devices. Security analysis and empirical evaluation results verify the effectiveness and efficiency of our scheme. I