Passengers information in public transport and privacy: Can anonymous tickets prevent tracking?

Gildas Avoine, Luca Calderoni, Jonathan Delvaux, Dario Maio and Paolo Palmieri

International Journal of Information Management, 2014, vol. 34, issue 5, 682-688

Abstract: Modern public transportation companies often record large amounts of information. Privacy can be safeguarded by discarding nominal tickets, or introducing anonymization techniques. But is anonymity at all possible when everything is recorded? In this paper we discuss travel information management in the public transport scenario and we present a revealing case study (relative to the city of Cesena, Italy), showing that even anonymous 10-ride bus tickets may betray a user's privacy expectations. We also propose a number of recommendations for the design and management of public transport information systems, aimed at preserving the users’ privacy, while retaining the useful analysis features enabled by the e-ticketing technology.

Keywords: Privacy; Public transport; Sensitive data management; Privacy preserving technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0268401214000620
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ininma:v:34:y:2014:i:5:p:682-688

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2014.05.004

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Information Management is currently edited by Yogesh K. Dwivedi

More articles in International Journal of Information Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().