Paper 2016/764

ANOTEL: Cellular Networks with Location Privacy (Extended Version)

Tim Dittler and Florian Tschorsch and Stefan Dietzel and Björn Scheuermann

Abstract

Location management is a key component of cellular networks. From a privacy perspective, however, it is also a major weakness: location management empowers the network operator to track users. In today's public and scientific discussion, the centralized storage of location data is mostly taken as a fact, and users are expected to trust the network operator. ANOTEL presents a novel, clean-slate approach of location management in cellular networks that challenges this assumption. We developed a design that is able to route calls to users who move through cellular networks, without violating their location privacy. We evaluate our approach using simulations and a practical user tracking algorithm.