Anonymity in a mobile computing environment

Abstract

In a mobile computing environment, it is desirable to protect information about the movements and activities of mobile entities from onlookers. Solutions to this problem of providing anonymity have to be developed with the constraints of mobile computing environments in mind. It is argued that this issue merits investigation. A brief survey of the nature of anonymity provided in proposed or existing mobile computing environments is presented. It is argued further that achieving limited but practical anonymity using standard cryptographic techniques is feasible. Example solutions are presented.