Location-based trust for mobile user-generated content: applications, challenges and implementations

The recent explosion in shared media content and sensed data produced by mobile end-users is challenging well-established principles and assumptions in data trust models. A fundamental issue we address in this paper is how to establish some trust level in the authenticity of content created by untrusted mobile users. We advocate a secure localization and certification service that allows content producers to tag their content with with a spatial times-tamp indicating its physical location. At the same time, however, our approach preserves the privacy of producers by not exposing their identity to the potential content consumers. We provide a list of existing and possible applications that would profit from such a secure localization service and sketch possible implementations of the service, highlighting advantages and drawbacks.