Key Challenges in Sanitizing Transportation Data to Protect Sensitive Information

As new mobility services such as ridehailing and shared micromobility have grown, so has the quantity of data available about how and where people travel. Transportation data provides government agencies and transportation companies with valuable information that can be used for identifying traffic patterns, predicting infrastructure needs, informing city planning, and other purposes. However, the data may also contain sensitive information that can identify individuals, the beginning and ending points of their trips, and other details that raise concerns about personal privacy. Even if a traveler’s name and address is suppressed, adversaries could use other parts of the information such as trip origin and destination to learn an individual’s identity and their habits. Similarly, another transportation company competing with the company that collected the data could potentially steal their customer base if they can use the data to obtain proprietary information such as frequent dropoff/pick-up locations, vehicle positioning, travel routes, or algorithms for assigning vehicles to clients.