A Context-Sensitive Privacy-Aware Framework for Proactive Location-Based Services

The recent years have seen a vast growth of location-based services (LBS) usage with the ubiquity of smart mobile devices. While reactive LBS act on the user´s request, proactive LBS notify the user proactively of relevant location-specific content in case a dedicated area is entered. The usage scenarios of proactive LBS vary from location-based reminders to location-based marketing. With the increasing popularity of LBS also privacy concerns are raised, reclaiming the whereabouts of a user worth protecting. This is especially true for proactive LBS as they constantly share the location of the mobile device with the service and hence continuously track the user´s location in order to act proactively. This paper introduces a context-sensitive privacy-awareness framework for mobile devices which enables mobile device users to individually define different privacy preferences for different contexts. It is intended to give the user full control over her/his sensitive location information to allow the user to determine whenever and wherever the user´s location is allowed to be shared with 3rd party applications or services. As a proof of concept, a prototypical implementation is presented which enforces the user´s context-sensitive privacy settings on mobile devices during the use of proactive LBS.