Advances in sensing and tracking technology enable location-based applications but they also create significant privacy risks. Anonymity can provide a high degree of privacy, save service users from dealing with service providers’ privacy policies, and reduce the service providers’ requirements for safeguarding private information. However, guaranteeing anonymous usage of location-based services requires that the precise location information transmitted by a user cannot be easily used to re-identify the subject. This paper presents a middleware architecture and algorithms that can be used by a centralized location broker service. The adaptive algorithms adjust the resolution of location information along spatial or temporal dimensions to meet specified anonymity constraints based on the entities who may be using location services within a given area. Using a model based on automotive traffic counts and cartographic material, we estimate the realistically expected spatial resolution for different anonymity constraints. The median resolution generated by our algorithms is 125 meters. Thus, anonymous location-based requests for urban areas would have the same accuracy currently needed for E-911 services; this would provide sufficient resolution for wayfinding, automated bus routing services and similar location-dependent services.

/pdf/anonymous-usage-of-location-based-services-through-spatial-4o8wvs27a8.pdf

Anonymous Usage of Location-Based Services Through Spatial and Temporal Cloaking

Vehicular networks are very likely to be deployed in the coming years and thus become the most relevant form of mobile ad hoc networks. In this paper, we address the security of these networks. We provide a detailed threat analysis and devise an appropriate security architecture. We also describe some major design decisions still to be made, which in some cases have more than mere technical implications. We provide a set of security protocols, we show that they protect privacy and we analyze their robustness and efficiency.

/pdf/securing-vehicular-ad-hoc-networks-4sgegi8hgk.pdf

Securing vehicular ad hoc networks

An intelligent automated assistant system engages with the user in an integrated, conversational manner using natural language dialog, and invokes external services when appropriate to obtain information or perform various actions. The system can be implemented using any of a number of different platforms, such as the web, email, smartphone, and the like, or any combination thereof. In one embodiment, the system is based on sets of interrelated domains and tasks, and employs additional functionally powered by external services with which the system can interact.

Intelligent Automated Assistant

A recommender system aims to provide users with personalized online product or service recommendations to handle the increasing online information overload problem and improve customer relationship management. Various recommender system techniques have been proposed since the mid-1990s, and many sorts of recommender system software have been developed recently for a variety of applications. Researchers and managers recognize that recommender systems offer great opportunities and challenges for business, government, education, and other domains, with more recent successful developments of recommender systems for real-world applications becoming apparent. It is thus vital that a high quality, instructive review of current trends should be conducted, not only of the theoretical research results but more importantly of the practical developments in recommender systems. This paper therefore reviews up-to-date application developments of recommender systems, clusters their applications into eight main categories: e-government, e-business, e-commerce/e-shopping, e-library, e-learning, e-tourism, e-resource services and e-group activities, and summarizes the related recommendation techniques used in each category. It systematically examines the reported recommender systems through four dimensions: recommendation methods (such as CF), recommender systems software (such as BizSeeker), real-world application domains (such as e-business) and application platforms (such as mobile-based platforms). Some significant new topics are identified and listed as new directions. By providing a state-of-the-art knowledge, this survey will directly support researchers and practical professionals in their understanding of developments in recommender system applications. Research papers on various recommender system applications are summarized.The recommender systems are examined systematically through four dimensions.The recommender system applications are classified into eight categories.Related recommendation techniques in each category are identified.Several new recommendation techniques and application areas are uncovered.

Recommender system application developments

Vehicular networks are likely to become the most relevant form of mobile ad hoc networks. In this paper, we address the security of these networks. We provide a detailed threat analysis and devise an appropriate security architecture. We also describe some major design decisions still to be made, which in some cases have more than mere technical implications. We provide a set of security protocols, we show that they protect privacy and we analyze their robustness, and we carry out a quantitative assessment of the proposed solution.

/pdf/the-security-of-vehicular-ad-hoc-networks-18mmhfg5b3.pdf

The security of vehicular ad hoc networks

We describe a personalized recommender system designed to suggest new products to supermarket shoppers. The recommender functions in a pervasive computing environment, namely, a remote shopping system in which supermarket customers use Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) to compose and transmit their orders to the store, which assembles them for subsequent pickup. The recommender is meant to provide an alternative source of new ideas for customers who now visit the store less frequently. Recommendations are generated by matching products to customers based on the expected appeal of the product and the previous spending of the customer. Associations mining in the product domain is used to determine relationships among product classes for use in characterizing the appeal of individual products. Clustering in the customer domain is used to identify groups of shoppers with similar spending histories. Cluster-specific lists of popular products are then used as input to the matching process.

The recommender is currently being used in a pilot program with several hundred customers. Analysis of results to date have shown a 1.8% boost in program revenue as a result of purchases made directly from the list of recommended products. A substantial fraction of the accepted recommendations are from product classes new to the customer, indicating a degree of willingness to expand beyond present purchase patterns in response to reasonable suggestions.

https://www.gsalmasi.com/prefeng/docs/recomPaper.pdf

Personalization of Supermarket Product Recommendations

Automotive telematics may be defined as the information-intensive applications that are being enabled for vehicles by a combination of telecommunications and computing technology. Telematics by its nature requires the capture of sensor data, storage and exchange of data to obtain remote services. In order for automotive telematics to grow to its full potential, telematics data must be protected. Data protection must include privacy and security for end-users, service providers and application providers. In this paper, we propose a new framework for data protection that is built on the foundation of privacy and security technologies. The privacy technology enables users and service providers to define flexible data model and policy models. The security technology provides traditional capabilities such as encryption, authentication, non-repudiation. In addition, it provides secure environments for protected execution, which is essential to limiting data access to specific purposes.

/pdf/framework-for-security-and-privacy-in-automotive-telematics-543quf2ub3.pdf

Framework for security and privacy in automotive telematics

The invention includes various systems, architectures, frameworks and methodologies that can securely enforce a privacy policy. A method is include for securely guaranteeing a privacy policy between two enterprises, comprising: creating a message at a first enterprise, wherein the message includes a request for data concerning a third party and a privacy policy of the first enterprise; signing and certifying the message that the first enterprise has a tamper-proof system with a privacy rules engine and that the privacy policy of the first entity will be enforced by the privacy rules engine of the first enterprise; sending the message to a second enterprise; and running a privacy rules engine at the second enterprise to compare the privacy policy of the first enterprise with a set of privacy rules for the third party.

Secure system and method for enforcement of privacy policy and protection of confidentiality

A reservation management system includes at least one processing node that includes a memory and a processor. The at least one processing node further includes a set of reservation processing and transaction modules that manage and process reservation requests and inquiries. At least one general purpose database is communicatively coupled to the at least one processing node. The at least one general purpose database includes a set of pre-allocated tables of fixed length records. At least one persistent storage device is communicatively coupled to the at least one processing node. The general purpose database persistently stores the set of pre-allocated tables of fixed length records on the at least one persistent storage device.

Two-layer data architecture for reservation management systems

A method of sharing telematics data for a vehicle with service providers can include receiving the telematics data for the vehicle, where the telematics data dynamically changes over time, and comparing the telematics data with a privacy policy associated with the vehicle. The privacy policy can specify rules for selectively releasing items of the telematics data to one or more service providers. Data items of the telematics data can be selectively provided to the service providers according to the comparing step.

Sastry S. Duri

Papers

Personalization of Supermarket Product Recommendations

Framework for security and privacy in automotive telematics

Secure system and method for enforcement of privacy policy and protection of confidentiality

Two-layer data architecture for reservation management systems

Method, system, and apparatus for dynamic data-driven privacy policy protection and data sharing