Elastic pathing: Your speed is enough to track you

Xianyi Gao*, Bernhard Firner, Shridatt Sugrim, Victor Kaiser-Pendergrast, Yulong Yang, Janne Lindqvist

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference article in proceedingsScientificpeer-review

59 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Today, people have the opportunity to opt-in to usage-based automotive insurances for reduced premiums by allowing companies to monitor their driving behavior. Several companies claim to measure only speed data to preserve privacy. With our elastic pathing algorithm, we show that drivers can be tracked by merely collecting their speed data and knowing their home location, which insurance companies do, with an accuracy that constitutes privacy intrusion. To demonstrate the algorithm's real-world applicability, we evaluated its performance with datasets from central New Jersey and Seattle, Washington, representing suburban and urban areas. Our algorithm predicted destinations with error within 250 meters for 14% traces and within 500 meters for 24% traces in the New Jersey dataset (254 traces). For the Seattle dataset (691 traces), we similarly predicted destinations with error within 250 and 500 meters for 13% and 26% of the traces respectively. Our work shows that these insurance schemes enable a substantial breach of privacy.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationUbiComp 2014 - Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing
PublisherACM
Pages975-986
Number of pages12
ISBN (Electronic)9781450329682
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2014
MoE publication typeA4 Conference publication
EventACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing - Seattle, United States
Duration: 13 Sept 201417 Sept 2014
Conference number: UbiComp
http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2014/

Conference

ConferenceACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing
Abbreviated titleUbiComp
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySeattle
Period13/09/201417/09/2014
Internet address

Keywords

  • Destination prediction
  • Elastic pathing
  • Location privacy
  • Usage-based automotive insurance

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