Private Location-Based Services

Location-based services from are quickly gaining popularity. Many such services track the user's location and make use of it as needed. While tracking raises privacy concerns, it is believed to be unavoidable if users want the benefits of location-based services. In this talk I will give several examples of services that provide location-based functionality without learning the user's location. Our goal is to show that privacy and functionality are not always in conflict. We will also discuss our experiences with deploying these mechanisms in the real world. This is joint work with Arvind Narayanan, Mike Hamburg, and Narendran Thiagarajan.

About the speaker: Dr. Boneh heads the applied crypto group at the Computer Science
department at Stanford University. Dr. Boneh's research focuses on applications of cryptography to computer security. His work includes cryptosystems with novel properties, security for mobile devices, web security, digital copyright protection, and cryptanalysis. He is the author of over a hundred technical publications in the field and a recipient of the Packard Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Award, the RSA award, and the Terman Award.