Location-Related Privacy in Geo-Social Networks

Geo-social networks (GeoSNs) provide context-aware services that help associate location with users and content. The proliferation of GeoSNs indicates that they're rapidly attracting users. GeoSNs currently offer different types of services, including photo sharing, friend tracking, and "check-ins." However, this ability to reveal users' locations causes new privacy threats, which in turn call for new privacy-protection methods. The authors study four privacy aspects central to these social networks — location, absence, co-location, and identity privacy — and describe possible means of protecting privacy in these circumstances.