The International Workshop on Privacy-Aware Location-Based Mobile Services (PALMS 2007)

Combining the functionality of location-aware devices, wireless and cellular phone technologies, and data management results in enabling a new era of location-based mobile services that aim to provide personalized services to their customers based on their current locations. Examples of such services include location-aware emergency service, location-based advertisement, live traffic reports, and location-based store finder. Although location-based services promise safety and convenience, they threaten the privacy and security for their customers as they rely mainly on the knowledge of their customers' location information. The current model of location-based services trades the customers' privacy with the service. If a user wants to keep her private location information, she has to turn off her location-aware device and temporarily unsubscribe from the service. Recent social studies show that customers become more privacy-aware as they tend to avoid using location-based services in order to keep their privacy. As a result, there is a real concern that the privacy issues may hinder the technological advances in location-based services.