Short Paper: Location Privacy with IP Mobility

Privacy when using IP communication has become an important problem. It is a challenging problem that spans multiple layers in the OSI reference model with various constant identifiers that can be profiled. This leads to user privacy concerns. Location Privacy, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with revealing a user’s identity as a function of mobility. When a user visits a new network and uses a fixed identifier, such as a Mobile IPv6 Home Address for communication, on-lookers can determine that the user has roamed. We address this problem of location privacy and provide a Privacy-Tag for use in place of a fixed identifier to protect user privacy. Our method is readily implementable using the Mobile IPv6 Return Routability [2] protocol and the Binding Update procedure.