Patent ID: 9736685
Date: 2017-08-15
CPC Classifications: G06F,H04L,H04W

Claim:
1. A non-transitory computer readable medium bearing one or more instructions for providing location-based services to a user by cloaking a location using footprints comprising: receiving a location associated with a mobile node, wherein the location of the mobile node comprises a selection of a spatial region from the user; receiving an anonymity level associated with the location of the mobile node; computing a region containing the location of the mobile node and a number of footprints based on the anonymity level, wherein each of the footprints is from a different user and said footprints comprise historical location samples stored in an accessible database and said number of footprints taken from the database; and providing the region to a location-based service to thereby preserve anonymity of the mobile node; wherein computing the region comprises determining a minimal bounding circle being computed with a polynomial-time algorithm.