Privacy issues in vehicular ad hoc networks

Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) demand a thorough investigation of privacy related issues. On one hand, users of such networks have to be prevented from misuse of their private data by authorities, from location profiling and from other attacks on their privacy. On the other hand, system operators and car manufacturers have to be able to identify malfunctioning units for sake of system availability and security. These requirements demand an architecture that can really manage privacy instead of either providing full anonymity or no privacy at all. In this paper we give an overview on the privacy issues in vehicular ad hoc networks from a car manufacturer's perspective and introduce an exemplary approach to overcome these issues.