User Controlled Privacy Protection in Location-Based Services

The rapid development of location-determining technologies has enabled tracking of people or objects more accurately than ever before and the volume and extent of tracking has increased dramatically over time. Within the broader domain of tracking technologies, location-based services (LBS) are a subset of capabilities that allow users to access information relative to their own physical location. However, the personal location information generated by such technologies is at risk of being misused or abused unless protection capabilities are built into the design of such systems. These concerns may ultimately prevent society from achieving the broad range of benefits that otherwise would be available to consumers. The assumption of the emerging location-based industry is that corporations will own and control location and other information about individuals. Traditionally, privacy has been addressed through minimum standard approaches. However, regulatory and technological approaches focused on one size fits all standards are ill equipped to accommodate the interests of individuals or broad groups of users. This research explores the possibility of developing an approach for protecting privacy in the use of location-based services that supports the autonomy of an individual through a combined technological and legal model that places the power to protect location privacy in the hands of consumers. A proof of concept user interface to illustrate how personal information privacy could be protected in the conceptual model is demonstrated. A major goal of this project is to create an operational vision supporting user controlled protection of privacy that can help direct technological efforts along appropriate paths

Implementing a map based simulator for the location API for J2ME

The Java Location API for J2METM integrates generic positioning and orientation data with persistent storage of landmark objects. It can be used to develop location based service applications for small mobile devices, and these applications can be tested using simulation environments. Currently the only simulation tools in the public domain are proprietary mobile device simulators that are driven by GPS data log files, but it is sometimes useful to be able to test location based services using interactive map-based tools. In addition, we may need to experiment with extensions and changes to the standard API to support additional services, requiring an open source environment. In this paper we describe the implementation of an open source map-based simulation tool compatible with other commonly used development and deployment tools

Quality assessment technique for ubiquitous software and middleware

The new paradigm of computing or information systems is ubiquitous computing systems. The technology-oriented issues of ubiquitous computing systems have made researchers pay much attention to the feasibility study of the technologies rather than building quality assurance indices or guidelines. In this context, measuring quality is the key to developing high-quality ubiquitous computing products. For this reason, various quality models have been defined, adopted and enhanced over the years, for example, the need for one recognised standard quality model (ISO/IEC 9126) is the result of a consensus for a software quality model on three levels: characteristics, sub-characteristics, and metrics. However, it is very much unlikely that this scheme will be directly applicable to ubiquitous computing environments which are considerably different to conventional software, trailing a big concern which is being given to reformulate existing methods, and especially to elaborate new assessment techniques for ubiquitous computing environments. This paper selects appropriate quality characteristics for the ubiquitous computing environment, which can be used as the quality target for both ubiquitous computing product evaluation processes ad development processes. Further, each of the quality characteristics has been expanded with evaluation questions and metrics, in some cases with measures. In addition, this quality model has been applied to the industrial setting of the ubiquitous computing environment. These have revealed that while the approach was sound, there are some parts to be more developed in the future

Technological framework for ubiquitous interactions using context–aware mobile devices

This report presents research and development of dedicated system architecture, designed to enable its users to interact with each other as well as to access information on Points of Interest that exist in their immediate environment. This is accomplished through managing personal preferences and contextual information in a distributed manner and in real-time. The advantage of this system architecture is that it uses mobile devices, heterogeneous sensors and a selection of user interface paradigms to produce a sociotechnical framework to enhance the perception of the environment and promote intuitive interactions. The thrust of the work has been on software development and component integration. Iterative prototyping was adopted as a development method in order to effectively implement the users’ feedback and establish a platform for collaboration that closely meets the requirements and aids their decision-making process. The requirement acquisition was followed by the system-modelling phase in order to produce a robust software prototype. The implementation includes component-based development and extensive use of design patterns over native programming. Conclusively, the software product has become the means to evaluate differences in the use of mixed reality technologies in a ubiquitous scenario. The prototype can query a number of context sources such as sensors, or details of the personal profile, to acquire relevant data. The data (and metadata) is stored in opensource structures, so that they are accessible at every layer of the system architecture and at any time. By proactively processing the acquired context, the system can assist the users in their tasks (e.g. navigation) without explicit input – e.g. by simply creating a gesture with the device. However, advanced interaction with the application via the user interface is available for requests that are more complex. Representations of the real world objects, their spatial relations and other captured features of interest are visualised on scalable interfaces, ranging from 2D to 3D models and from photorealism to stylised clues and symbols. Two principal modes of operation have been implemented; one, using geo-referenced virtual reality models of the environment, updated in real time, and second, using the overlay of descriptive annotations and graphics on the video images of the surroundings, captured by a video camera. The latter is referred to as augmented reality. The continuous feed of the device position and orientation data, from the GPS receiver and the digital compass, into the application, makes the framework fit for use in unknown environments and therefore suitable for ubiquitous operation. This is one of the novelties of the proposed framework, because it enables a whole range of social, peer-to-peer interactions to take place. The scenarios of how the system could be employed to pursue these remote interactions and collaborative efforts on mobile devices are addressed in the context of urban navigation. The conceptual design and implementation of the novel location and orientation based algorithm for mobile AR are presented in detail. The system is, however, multifaceted and capable of supporting peer-to-peer exchange of information in a pervasive fashion, usable in various contexts. The modalities of these interactions are explored and laid out in several scenarios, but particularly in the context of user adoption. Two evaluation tasks took place. The preliminary evaluation examined certain aspects that influence user interaction while being immersed in a virtual environment, whereas the second summative evaluation compared the utility and certain usability aspects of the AR and VR interfaces

Obfuscation and anonymization methods for locational privacy protection : a systematic literature review

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial TechnologiesThe mobile technology development combined with the business model of a majority of application companies is posing a potential risk to individuals’ privacy. Because the industry default practice is unrestricted data collection. Although, the data collection has virtuous usage in improve services and procedures; it also undermines user’s privacy. For that reason is crucial to learn what is the privacy protection mechanism state-of-art. Privacy protection can be pursued by passing new regulation and developing preserving mechanism. Understanding in what extent the current technology is capable to protect devices or systems is important to drive the advancements in the privacy preserving field, addressing the limits and challenges to deploy mechanism with a reasonable quality of Service-QoS level. This research aims to display and discuss the current privacy preserving schemes, its capabilities, limitations and challenges

Discovering location based services: A unified approach for heterogeneous indoor localization systems

The technological solutions and communication capabilities offered by the Internet of Things paradigm, in terms of raising availability of wearable devices, the ubiquitous internet connection, and the presence on the market of service-oriented solutions, have allowed a wide proposal of Location Based Services (LBS). In a close future, we foresee that companies and service providers will have developed reliable solutions to address indoor positioning, as basis for useful location based services. These solutions will be different from each other and they will adopt different hardware and processing techniques. This paper describes the proposal of a unified approach for Indoor Localization Systems that enables the cooperation between heterogeneous solutions and their functional modules. To this end, we designed an integrated architecture that, abstracting its main components, allows a seamless interaction among them. Finally, we present a working prototype of such architecture, which is based on the popular Telegram application for Android, as an integration demonstrator. The integration of the three main phases –namely the discovery phase, the User Agent self-configuration, and the indoor map retrieval/rendering– demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed integrated architectur

Multi-Dimensional-Personalization in mobile contexts

During the dot com era the word "personalisation” was a hot buzzword. With the fall of the dot com companies the topic has lost momentum. As the killer application for UMTS or the mobile internet has yet to be identified, the concept of Multi-Dimensional-Personalisation (MDP) could be a candidate. Using this approach, a recommendation of mobile advertisement or marketing (i.e., recommendations or notifications), online content, as well as offline events, can be offered to the user based on their known interests and current location. Instead of having to request or pull this information, the new service concept would proactively provide the information and services – with the consequence that the right information or service could therefore be offered at the right place, at the right time. The growing availability of "Location-based Services“ for mobile phones is a new target for the use of personalisation. "Location-based Services“ are information, for example, about restaurants, hotels or shopping malls with offers which are in close range / short distance to the user. The lack of acceptance for such services in the past is based on the fact that early implementations required the user to pull the information from the service provider. A more promising approach is to actively push information to the user. This information must be from interest to the user and has to reach the user at the right time and at the right place. This raises new requirements on personalisation which will go far beyond present requirements. It will reach out from personalisation based only on the interest of the user. Besides the interest, the enhanced personalisation has to cover the location and movement patterns, the usage and the past, present and future schedule of the user. This new personalisation paradigm has to protect the user’s privacy so that an approach supporting anonymous recommendations through an extended "Chinese Wall“ will be described