Entropy-Based Quantification of Privacy Attained Through User Profile Similarity

TLDR: This work quantifies the amount of privacy gain attained through K anonymity technique of location privacy, opting-for users with similar profiles instead of random users, by using KL divergence.

Abstract: Location-based services refer to services that use location as primary input. But accessing user's location by an adversary invites issues of privacy breach. Instead of specific location coordinates, its surrounding area known as cloaking region is revealed in order to get the service. K anonymity technique of location privacy ensures that at least K-1 users should be included within a specific cloaked region. Researches have established that on combining K anonymity with the idea of including similar users together in a cloaked region provides stringent privacy (especially from background and heterogeneity attacks). This work quantifies the amount of privacy gain attained through, opting-for users with similar profiles instead of random users. The quantification is done by using KL divergence. Values of KL divergence of user profiles have been calculated for different cloaking regions containing similar and random users. Low KL divergence values depict privacy gains up to 33% for users with similar profiles.