Privacy in trajectory micro-data publishing : a survey

TL;DR

This survey reviews methods and challenges in preserving privacy when publishing trajectory micro-data, highlighting attack types, protection solutions, and future research directions in the context of increasing data collection.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive classification of privacy attacks and summarizes existing privacy-preserving techniques for trajectory data publishing.

Findings

Identifies key attack vectors on trajectory data

Summarizes current privacy-preserving solutions

Highlights open problems and future research directions

Abstract

We survey the literature on the privacy of trajectory micro-data, i.e., spatiotemporal information about the mobility of individuals, whose collection is becoming increasingly simple and frequent thanks to emerging information and communication technologies. The focus of our review is on privacy-preserving data publishing (PPDP), i.e., the publication of databases of trajectory micro-data that preserve the privacy of the monitored individuals. We classify and present the literature of attacks against trajectory micro-data, as well as solutions proposed to date for protecting databases from such attacks. This paper serves as an introductory reading on a critical subject in an era of growing awareness about privacy risks connected to digital services, and provides insights into open problems and future directions for research.