{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,31]],"date-time":"2026-03-31T14:40:56Z","timestamp":1774968056140,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":50,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"12","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,6,21]],"date-time":"2020-06-21T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1592697600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Location-based services (LBS) bring convenience to people\u2019s lives but are also accompanied with privacy leakages. To protect the privacy of LBS users, many location privacy protection algorithms were proposed. However, these algorithms often have difficulty to maintain a balance between service quality and user privacy. In this paper, we first overview the shortcomings of the existing two privacy protection architectures and privacy protection technologies, then we propose a location privacy protection method based on blockchain. Our method satisfies the principle of k-anonymity privacy protection and does not need the help of trusted third-party anonymizing servers. The combination of multiple private blockchains can disperse the user\u2019s transaction records, which can provide users with stronger location privacy protection and will not reduce the quality of service. We also propose a reward mechanism to encourage user participation. Finally, we implement our approach in the Remix blockchain to show the efficiency, which further indicates the potential application prospect for the distributed network environment.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s20123519","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,6,23]],"date-time":"2020-06-23T09:05:33Z","timestamp":1592903133000},"page":"3519","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":39,"title":["A Novel Location Privacy-Preserving Approach Based on Blockchain"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"20","author":[{"given":"Ying","family":"Qiu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China"}]},{"given":"Yi","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China"}]},{"given":"Xuan","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China"}]},{"given":"Jiahui","family":"Chen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,6,21]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"40","DOI":"10.1016\/j.future.2018.10.053","article-title":"A caching and spatial K-anonymity driven privacy enhancement scheme in continuous location-based services","volume":"94","author":"Zhang","year":"2019","journal-title":"Futur. Gener. Comput. Syst."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"20","DOI":"10.1109\/MIC.2011.29","article-title":"Location-Related Privacy in Geo-Social Networks","volume":"15","author":"Bettini","year":"2011","journal-title":"IEEE Internet Comput."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Gao, H., and Liu, H. (2014). Data Analysis on Location-Based Social Networks. Mobile Social Networking, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-1-4614-8579-7_8"},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"20","DOI":"10.1023\/A:1022491825047","article-title":"An overview of location-based services","volume":"21","author":"Roza","year":"2003","journal-title":"BT Technol. J."},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"712","DOI":"10.1016\/j.compenvurbsys.2006.02.003","article-title":"Location-based services and GIS in perspective","volume":"30","author":"Jiang","year":"2006","journal-title":"Comput. Environ. Urban Syst."},{"key":"ref_6","unstructured":"Schiller, J.H., and Voisard, A. (2004). Location-Based Services, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc."},{"key":"ref_7","first-page":"3199","article-title":"A Survey of System Architectures, Privacy Preservation, and Main Research Challenges on Location-Based Services","volume":"13","author":"Tefera","year":"2019","journal-title":"KSII Trans. Internet Inf. Syst."},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"48","DOI":"10.1016\/j.future.2016.06.017","article-title":"ASA: Against statistical attacks for privacy-aware users in Location Based Service","volume":"70","author":"Sun","year":"2017","journal-title":"Futur. Gener. Comput. Syst."},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sung, K., Levine, B., and Zheleva, M. (2020). ZipPhone: Protecting user location privacy from cellular service providers. arXiv.","DOI":"10.1145\/3395351.3399369"},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"295","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-319-22363-6_16","article-title":"Combining Differential Privacy and PIR for Efficient Strong Location Privacy","volume":"Volume 9239","author":"Fung","year":"2015","journal-title":"Proceedings of the Claramunt C. et al. (eds) Advances in Spatial and Temporal Databases"},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"747","DOI":"10.1145\/2723372.2747643","article-title":"Bayesian Differential Privacy on Correlated Data","volume":"Volume 2015","author":"Yang","year":"2015","journal-title":"Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data\u2014SIGMOD \u201915"},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ji, Y., Gui, R., Gui, X., Liao, D., and Lin, X. (2020). Location Privacy Protection in Online Query based-on Privacy Region Replacement. 2020 10th Annu. Comput. Commun. Work. Conf., 0742\u20130747.","DOI":"10.1109\/CCWC47524.2020.9031176"},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"406","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ins.2019.05.054","article-title":"A Trajectory Privacy-Preserving Scheme Based on Dual-K Mechanism for Continuous Location-Based Services","volume":"527","author":"Zhang","year":"2020","journal-title":"Inf. Sci. (Ny)."},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1109\/TMC.2007.1062","article-title":"Protecting location privacy with personalized k-anonymity: Architecture and algorithms","volume":"7","author":"Gedik","year":"2008","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Mob. Comput."},{"key":"ref_15","first-page":"41","article-title":"Towards an information theoretic metric for anonymity","volume":"2482","author":"Serjantov","year":"2003","journal-title":"Lect. Notes Comput. Sci. (including Subser. Lect. Notes Artif. Intell. Lect. Notes Bioinformatics)"},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3","DOI":"10.1145\/1217299.1217302","article-title":"L-Diversity: Privacy Beyond k-Anonymity","volume":"1","author":"Machanavajjhala","year":"2007","journal-title":"ACM Trans. Knowl. Discov. Data"},{"key":"ref_17","unstructured":"(2020, April 03). Currency\u2014Dash, D.O.W.C. Available online: www.dash.org."},{"key":"ref_18","unstructured":"(2020, April 03). Litecoin, Litecoin-Open Source P2P Digital Currency. Available online: https:\/\/litecoin.org\/."},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"352","DOI":"10.1504\/IJWGS.2018.095647","article-title":"Blockchain challenges and opportunities: A survey","volume":"14","author":"Wang","year":"2018","journal-title":"Int. J. Web Grid Serv."},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Shahid, A.R., Pissinou, N., Njilla, L., Alemany, S., Imteaj, A., Makki, K., and Aguilar, E. (2019). Quantifying location privacy in permissioned blockchain-based internet of things (IoT). Proceedings of the 16th EAI International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Computing, Networking and Services, ACM Press.","DOI":"10.1145\/3360774.3360800"},{"key":"ref_21","unstructured":"Bayardo, R.J., and Agrawal, R. (2005, January 5\u20138). Data Privacy through Optimal k-Anonymization. Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE\u201905), Tokoyo, Japan."},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3","DOI":"10.1145\/1882471.1882473","article-title":"Providing K-Anonymity in location based services","volume":"12","author":"Kalnis","year":"2010","journal-title":"ACM SIGKDD Explor. Newsl."},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Gruteser, M., and Grunwald, D. (2003, January 5\u20138). Anonymous Usage of Location-Based Services Through Spatial and Temporal Cloaking. Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services\u2014MobiSys \u201903, San Francisco, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/1066116.1189037"},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Li, F., Chen, Y., Niu, B., He, Y., Geng, K., and Cao, J. (2018, January 9\u201313). Achieving Personalized k-Anonymity against Long-Term Observation in Location-Based Services. Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), Abu Dhabi, UAE.","DOI":"10.1109\/GLOCOM.2018.8647719"},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Andr\u00e9s, M.E., Bordenabe, N.E., Chatzikokolakis, K., and Palamidessi, C. (2013, January 4\u20138). Geo-indistinguishability: Differential privacy for location-based systems. Proceedings of the Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, Berlin, Germany.","DOI":"10.1145\/2508859.2516735"},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3628","DOI":"10.1109\/TII.2017.2773646","article-title":"Location privacy protection based on differential privacy strategy for big data in industrial internet of things","volume":"14","author":"Yin","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Ind. Informatics"},{"key":"ref_27","first-page":"1","article-title":"PRIVANET: An Efficient Pseudonym Changing and Management Framework for Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks","volume":"PP","author":"Boualouache","year":"2019","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst."},{"key":"ref_28","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"881","DOI":"10.1016\/j.future.2017.06.022","article-title":"Enhancing privacy through uniform grid and caching in location-based services","volume":"86","author":"Zhang","year":"2018","journal-title":"Futur. Gener. Comput. Syst."},{"key":"ref_29","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"13466","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2018.2805464","article-title":"Cognitive Approach for Location Privacy Protection","volume":"6","author":"Han","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"key":"ref_30","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Chow, C.Y., Mokbel, M.F., and Liu, X. (2006). A peer-to-peer spatial cloaking algorithm for anonymous location-based service. GIS Proc. ACM Int. Symp. Adv. Geogr. Inf. Syst., 171\u2013178.","DOI":"10.1145\/1183471.1183500"},{"key":"ref_31","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"351","DOI":"10.1007\/s10707-009-0099-y","article-title":"Spatial cloaking for anonymous location-based services in mobile peer-to-peer environments","volume":"15","author":"Chow","year":"2011","journal-title":"Geoinformatica"},{"key":"ref_32","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"165","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ins.2016.08.010","article-title":"Collaborative trajectory privacy preserving scheme in location-based services","volume":"387","author":"Peng","year":"2017","journal-title":"Inf. Sci. (Ny)."},{"key":"ref_33","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"87","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jnca.2016.09.009","article-title":"SocialHide: A generic distributed framework for location privacy protection","volume":"76","author":"Hwang","year":"2016","journal-title":"J. Netw. Comput. Appl."},{"key":"ref_34","first-page":"88","article-title":"An anonymous communication technique using dummies for location-based services","volume":"2005","author":"Kido","year":"2005","journal-title":"Proc. Int. Conf. Pervasive Serv. ICPS\u201905"},{"key":"ref_35","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lu, H., Jensen, C.S., and Yiu, M.L. (2008, January 13). PAD: Privacy-Area Aware, Dummy-Based Location Privacy in Mobile Services. Proceedings of the Seventh ACM International Workshop on Data Engineering for Wireless and Mobile Access\u2014MobiDE \u201908, Vancouver, BC, Canada.","DOI":"10.1145\/1626536.1626540"},{"key":"ref_36","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Yanagisawa, Y., Kido, H., and Satoh, T. (2006, January 17\u201321). Location Privacy of Users in Location-based Services tGraduate. Proceedings of the 2006 Third Annual International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Networking & Services, San Jose, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/MOBIQ.2006.340382"},{"key":"ref_37","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"673","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2016.2526060","article-title":"Dummy-Based User Location Anonymization under Real-World Constraints","volume":"4","author":"Hara","year":"2016","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"key":"ref_38","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Suzuki, A., Iwata, M., Arase, Y., Hara, T., Xie, X., and Nishio, S. (2010, January 2\u20135). A user location anonymization method for location based services in a real environment. Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 18th SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems\u2014GIS \u201910, San Jose, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/1869790.1869846"},{"key":"ref_39","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1546","DOI":"10.1109\/TKDE.2016.2520473","article-title":"Practical Approximate k Nearest Neighbor Queries with Location and Query Privacy","volume":"28","author":"Yi","year":"2016","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng."},{"key":"ref_40","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Jia, B., Zhou, T., Li, W., Liu, Z., and Zhang, J. (2018). A blockchain-based location privacy protection incentive mechanism in crowd sensing networks. Sensors, 18.","DOI":"10.3390\/s18113894"},{"key":"ref_41","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Amoretti, M., Brambilla, G., Medioli, F., and Zanichelli, F. (2018, January 16-20). Blockchain-Based Proof of Location. Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability and Security Companion (QRS-C), Lisbon, Portugal.","DOI":"10.1109\/QRS-C.2018.00038"},{"key":"ref_42","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2034","DOI":"10.1109\/TVT.2019.2957744","article-title":"Blockchain Enabled Trust-Based Location Privacy Protection Scheme in VANET","volume":"69","author":"Luo","year":"2020","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol."},{"key":"ref_43","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"408","DOI":"10.1016\/j.future.2018.11.046","article-title":"A blockchain-based location privacy-preserving crowdsensing system","volume":"94","author":"Yang","year":"2019","journal-title":"Futur. Gener. Comput. Syst."},{"key":"ref_44","unstructured":"Staff, E. (2016). Blockchains: The great chain of being sure about things. Econom. Retriev., 18, Available online: https:\/\/www.economist.com\/briefing\/2015\/10\/31\/the-great-chain-of-being-sure-about-things."},{"key":"ref_45","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Yaga, D., Mell, P., Roby, N., and Scarfone, K. (2019). Blockchain Technology Overview. arXiv.","DOI":"10.6028\/NIST.IR.8202"},{"key":"ref_46","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Memon, R., Li, J., and Ahmed, J. (2019). Simulation Model for Blockchain Systems Using Queuing Theory. Electronics, 8.","DOI":"10.3390\/electronics8020234"},{"key":"ref_47","unstructured":"Paverd, A.J., Martin, A., and Brown, I. (2020, April 03). Modelling and Automatically Analysing Privacy Properties for Honest-but-Curious Adversaries with Applications in the Smart Grid. Available online: https:\/\/ajpaverd.org\/publications\/casper-privacy-report.pdf."},{"key":"ref_48","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3","DOI":"10.1090\/S0273-0979-05-01086-4","article-title":"The Green-Tao Theorem on arithmetic progressions in the primes: An ergodic point of view","volume":"43","author":"Kra","year":"2005","journal-title":"Bull. Am. Math. Soc."},{"key":"ref_49","unstructured":"(2020, April 03). Remix. Available online: https:\/\/github.com\/ethereum\/remix."},{"key":"ref_50","unstructured":"Buterin, V. (2020, April 03). Ethereum White Paper, GitHub Repos. Available online: https:\/\/github.com\/ethereum\/wiki\/wiki\/White-Paper."}],"container-title":["Sensors"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/20\/12\/3519\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T09:41:29Z","timestamp":1760175689000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/20\/12\/3519"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2020,6,21]]},"references-count":50,"journal-issue":{"issue":"12","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,6]]}},"alternative-id":["s20123519"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/s20123519","relation":{},"ISSN":["1424-8220"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1424-8220","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2020,6,21]]}}}