Privacy in spatio-temporal databases: A microaggregation-based approach

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015. Technologies able to track moving objects such as GPS, GSM, and RFID, have been well-adoptedworldwide since the end of the 20th century. As a result, companies and governments manage and control huge spatio-temporal databases, whose publication could lead to previously unknown knowledge such as human behaviour patterns or newroad traffic trends (e.g., through Data Mining).Aimed at properly balancing data utility with users’ privacy rights, several microaggregation-based methods for publishing movement data have been proposed. These methods are reviewed in this book chapter.We highlight challenges in the three stages of themicroaggregation process namely, clustering, obfuscation, and privacy and utility evaluation. We also address some of these challenges by presenting yet another microaggregationbased method for privacy-preserving publication of spatio-temporal databases.