A TTP-free protocol for location privacy in location-based services

Location-based services (LBS) will be a keystone of the new information society that is founded on the information and communications technologies (ICTs). Mobile devices such as cell phones or laptops have become ubiquitous. They are equipped with a variety of localisation systems that make them proper for making use of the new LBS. Most of the times, these services are provided by a trusted company (e.g. a telecommunications company). However, the massive use of mobile devices pave the way for the creation of ad hoc wireless networks that can be used to exchange information based on locations. When the exchange of location information is done amongst untrusted parties, the privacy of the participants could be in jeopardy. In this paper we present a novel solution that guarantees the privacy of the users of LBS. Our technique is built up of several modules that progressively increase the privacy level of the users. Unlike the existing approaches, our proposal does not rely on a trusted third party (TTP) to anonymise the users and to guarantee their location privacy.