Preserving privacy in location based mobile coupon systems using anonymous authentication scheme

In these days, location based services are being more popular than ever and can be seen in ways like simple reservation systems to more complex commercial applications with their customized e-commerce logic. All of these applications are based on sending users locations and other confidential data over untrusted channels which can expose such private data to suicide hackers eavesdropping communication channel. One of these applications that this paper tries to cover is location based mobile coupons. In this service, users receive mobile coupons based on their location information from nearby stores. Sending location information to service providers without any consideration can disclose user location to malignant users or even service provides can use these information to track the user. In this paper we use anonymous authentication to preserving location privacy using blind signature. The unforgeability and unlinkability features of proposed method avoid coupon frauds and location tracking together.