Efficient dummy generation for considering obstacles and protecting user location

Summary To receive location‐based services (LBS), users must disclose their locations and queries to the LBS server, which can expose the user's identity, location, and other information. Recently, techniques for protecting user privacy using dummies have been researched. However, many factors, such as the distance between the obstacles and the dummies, must be considered in order to create dummies. Therefore, this study proposes an efficient dummy creation technique to improve user privacy protection. Experimental results show that the proposed technique improves on other recent techniques.