Privacy Protection Distributed Spatial Cloaking Scheme Based on Certified Reputation in Industrial Internet of Things

As a typical application in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Location-Based Service (LBS) are experiencing rapid development. To address the issue of user location privacy leakage during LBS, distributed spatial cloaking attracts considerable attention from researchers. This approach not only provides users with precise query results but also enhances their control over personal information, allowing users to independently decide whether to participate in constructing Anonymous Cloaking Regions (ACRs). However, existing LBS schemes are unable to effectively prevent malicious behavior by requesters or cooperators, leading to user privacy leakage. To resolve this issue, we propose a novel privacy-preserving LBS scheme that incorporates a Certified Reputation (CR) mechanism. The proposal integrates user-owned CRs with preset trust thresholds, forming an innovative interactive verification mechanism. This mechanism enhances user privacy while establishing a trustworthy framework, within which each user individually manages their CR information. It not only adapts to fully distributed scenarios but also supports cross-regional trust evaluation. Meanwhile, the scheme establishes trust relationships among users, ensuring that only mutually trusted users can collaborate to construct ACRs. Security analysis and extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed scheme effectively regulates user behavior during the construction of ACRs. Furthermore, it imposes minimal computational and communication overhead, highlighting its efficiency and practicality.