Confidentiality in a Mobile Location Based Service

Abstract

This thesis tackles the current issue of privacy in the growing mobile location-based applications, which provide an added value to users using their location. These location-based applications need a specific study of privacy attending to tracking, in order guarantee user right of privacy. This thesis is divided into two parts. The first discusses privacy and data security. In order to link terms data security and privacy, and overcome the differences between both fields, confidentiality is introduced. Data security ensures confidentiality, which guarantees user privacy. Since privacy is a social phenomenon, influenced by society, it will be incorporated through a survey of user opinion. Also, legislation about privacy needs to be taken into account. In the constructive part, a location-based application is built, in order to demonstrate how considering interactions of privacy, confidentiality, and data security influence a real application. A survey offered to potential users is used to define the level of privacy expected. Finally, the system is evaluated against confidentiality level established by privacy level from the survey results. In addition, this application will provide to society a tool to request help from people near the user, creating a social network based on trust in other users.