A contextual-adaptive location disclosure agent for general devices in the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to transform our daily lives and societies. This is, at least in part, due to its massively distributed and ubiquitous nature. To realize the benefits of the IoT, security and privacy issues associated with the use of the IoT need to be identified and addressed properly. In this paper, our focus is on protecting the privacy of the users of location-based services in the IoT. To achieve this protection, we propose a context-aware adaptive approach for general devices in the IoT, where the general devices are used by users in accessing the location-based services. The proposed approach is based on developing and utilizing an agent to manage location privacy in the context of requested network-based services. The results of an experiment conducted to show the effectiveness and efficiency of this approach are also reported.