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Spatial Anonymity

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

  • 68 Accesses

Synonyms

Anonymity in location-based services;Privacy-preserving spatial queries;Spatial k-anonymity

Definition

LetU be a user who is asking via a mobile device (e.g., phone, PDA) a query relevant to his current location, such as “find the nearest betting office.” This query can be answered by a Location Based Service (LBS) in a public web server (e.g., Google Maps, MapQuest), which is not trustworthy. Since the query may be sensitive, U uses encryption and a pseudonym, in order to protect his privacy. However, the query still contains the exact location, which may reveal the identity of U. For example, if U asks the query within his residence, an attacker may use public information (e.g., white pages) to associate the location with U. Spatial k-Anonymity (SKA) solves this problem by ensuring that an attacker cannot identify U as the querying user with probability larger than 1∕k, where kis a user-defined anonymity requirement. To achieve this, a centralized or distributed...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Panos Kalnis & Gabriel Ghinita

Authors
  1. Panos Kalnis
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  2. Gabriel Ghinita
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. Dept. of Computer Science and Eng., Hong Kong Univ. of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR

    Dimitris Papadias

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© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Kalnis, P., Ghinita, G. (2016). Spatial Anonymity. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_352-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_352-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

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