Secure top-k query processing via untrusted location-based service providers

This paper considers a novel distributed system for collaborative location-based information generation and sharing which become increasingly popular due to the explosive growth of Internet-capable and location-aware mobile devices. The system consists of a data collector, data contributors, location-based service providers (LBSPs), and system users. The data collector gathers reviews about points-of-interest (POIs) from data contributors, while LBSPs purchase POI data sets from the data collector and allow users to perform location-based top-k queries which ask for the POIs in a certain region and with the highest k ratings for an interested POI attribute. In practice, LBSPs are untrusted and may return fake query results for various bad motives, e.g., in favor of POIs willing to pay. This paper presents two novel schemes for users to detect fake top-k query results as an effort to foster the practical deployment and use of the proposed system. The efficacy and efficiency of our schemes are thoroughly analyzed and evaluated.