Location based services

Abstract

Mobile devices (tablets, smart phones, laptops) are proving themselves to be the main means of accessing information of the future. The embodiment of Recommender Systems (RSs) into mobile environments, as a matter of fact, has come about to serve as a way to solve the nuisances of data overwhelming. RSs' main advantage is their ability to allow users to find useful information according to the users' preferences and location. Even though they are not free of shortcoming such as the limitation of mobile devices' function capability, the instability of wireless networks in remote regions or the lack of experience of end users, location-aware recommender systems are blessed with two great characteristics: "location-awareness" and "ubiquity" (the ability to be available anywhere, anytime needed). The combination of recommender systems, users' location data and social networks has paved the way for a new type of mobile service: Location Based Services (LBSs), a promising and sophisticated trend for the future of data services. However, LBSs do contain threats due to their ability to determine almost exactly the location of the service users. To make matters worse, since the concept of LBS has not been introduced for long enough time, even people with vast technical experience are not fully aware of such threats. So as to guarantee that LBS-related threats remain at their minimum level of sabotaging ability, several mechanisms dedicated to protecting the location privacy of LBS users has been researched and developed. Such protocols are named: Location Privacy Preserving Mechanisms (LPPMs). Finally, the thesis will dig into the business potentials of LBSs: how would business entities profit from implementing their services on a LBS-based platform and how would customer be pleased to use such services? Based on the knowledge collected from previous works on LBSs, personal observations and selected interviews of LBS users and experts, this thesis aims at creating a high quality source of references for those who may find it interesting in conducting further studies about LBSs and those who want to get some idea of how LBS-based businesses function.