Protecting location privacy and query privacy: a combined clustering approach

摘要

In this paper, a combined clustering algorithm namely enhanced clustering cloak (ECC), for protectingrnlocation privacy and query privacy is proposed. An iterative K-means clustering method is developed torngroup the user requests into clusters for providing location safety. Meanwhile, a hierarchical clusteringrnmethod for preserving the query privacy is used when creating clusters. ECC provides users with desirablernspatial and temporal tolerances. It can defend sampling attacks, homogeneity attacks, and query associationrnattacks simultaneously. Simulation results present that the ECC algorithm not only has merits in smallerrnnumber of clusters, shorter cloaking time, higher entropy and QoS level but also preserves location privacyrnand query privacy in continuous location based services.