Privacy for Location-Based Services

Sharing of location data enables numerous exciting applications, such as location-based queries, location-based social recommendations, monitoring of traffic and air pollution levels, etc. Disclosing exact user locations raises serious privacy concerns, as locations may give away sensitive information about individuals' health status, alternative lifestyles, political and religious affiliations, etc. Preserving location privacy is an essential requirement towards the successful deployment of location-based applications. These lecture notes provide an overview of the state-of-the-art in location privacy protection. A diverse body of solutions is reviewed, including methods that use location generalization, cryptographic techniques or differential privacy. The most prominent results are discussed, and promising directions for future work are identified.