Quantum-Secure Privacy-Preserving Profile Matching for Proximity-Based Mobile Social Networks

Proximity-based mobile social networks (PMSNs) represent a novel category of social networks that enable mobile users to discover and engage in new social interactions with nearby individuals through user-profile matching. The user’s personal profile contains sensitive information and raises increasing privacy concerns. Numerous solutions have been proposed to address this ongoing challenge, but the current methods using classical cryptographic techniques may lack quantum resistance and fail to ensure long-term security due to the emergence of quantum computers. In this paper, we propose a quantum-secure privacy-preserving profile matching scheme for PMSNs. The proposed scheme is grounded in the quantum threshold private set intersection (QTPSI) scheme, leveraging principles from quantum physics to safeguard the privacy of user profile and ensure secure information transmission, even in the presence of an adversary with powerful quantum computing power. Compared to existing schemes, our approach integrates quantum technologies, including single photons, rotational encryption, and single-particle measurements, to facilitate profile matching. This methodology effectively resists both classical and quantum attacks, ensuring that all information related to the profiles and matching results remains confidential.