A self-served mobile location query service

The existing location-based services position the mobile devices primarily by the cell where they are located. Mobile operators offer location-related services, for example shortest path suggestion, and active notification of subscriber's preference. Since location is a kind of subscriber privacy, people are usually reluctant to reveal this information unless confronted with emergency. However, if one can himself determine whether to provide his location information to a community or not, it becomes a convenience for mobile subscribers. As illustrations, a boss can know where his employee is, a visiting traveler can find and meet his friends who are currently at the same area, or parents can trace their children. This convenience has great potential popularity. This study constructs the above mobile location query service on a trust basis, and it provides two layers of protection to privacy: one is a trust certificate, and the other is the mobile subscriber's own will to reveal his location. With these two mechanisms, both convenience and privacy are retained. In the trend of next-generation telecommunication service, subscriber control plays an important role since it can support a variety of subscriber self-serve capabilities. The proposed mobile location query service provides a certain degree of subscriber control, and it can further combine a Web environment, thus advanced applications can be offered.