© 2019 Kaniz Fatema and M.M. Mahbubul Syeed. This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons
Attribution (CC-BY) 3.0 license.
Journal of Computer Science
Original Research Paper
A Privacy Protected Platform to Aggrandize Micro-Business
Kaniz Fatema and M.M. Mahbubul Syeed
Professional Member, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)
Article history
Received: 25-07-2019
Revised: 01-10-2019
Accepted: 07-11-2019
Corresponding Author:
M.M. Mahbubul Syeed
Professional Member, ACM
(Association for Computing
Machinery)
Email: mahbubul.syeed@gmail.com
Abstract: This paper presents a platform, which will provide both the micro-
businesses and its consumers a common ground to maximize their interests and
benefits and in turn better contribute to the economy. This research work offers
a comprehensive study on the micro businesses to portray their contributions
and needs for expansion. The research then designs a conceptual platform to
host, promote and manage businesses and their consumers. The platform is
integrated with the MyGeoTrust privacy service for better protecting associated
information. Finally, the research presents a prototype implementation of the
platform in android to demonstrate its applicability.
Keywords: Micro-Business, Data Privacy, Geo Tagged Location Data,
Virtual Business Platform Android, MyGeoTrust
Introduction
Micro-business often refers to the enterprises that are
having less than ten employees, including the owner
himself Pfitzner and McLaren (2018). Moreover, micro-
business served consumers within a given topographical
location. Despite their size, such businesses collectively
play a pivotal role within the overall economy of a
country. For instance, the USA, the major economic
powerhouse of the world, is enjoying 41.3 million jobs
hosted by micro-businesses.
However, studies show that businesses of this scale
often suffer from a comprehensive platform to publish and
commercialize their business services, mainly due to budget
constraints and workers Vega and Chiasson (2015).
Therefore, a virtual platform equipped with an adequate
feature set is an inevitable need for these businesses to
effectively promote and mobilize their business services to
a larger group of consumers with greater visibility.
Motivated by these factual needs, this research
designed and implemented a platform to support micro
businesses. The platform would offer a virtual mega mall
with a versatile range of consumers. Each micro-
business will have the opportunity to leverage this
platform to expose their business services to a larger
community of consumers. For instance, through this
platform a business can freely register within a category
of business, can unveil their products and services, offers
and promotions and can get the options to interact with
customers (e.g., contacting, booking, buying, location
services and others). Additionally, a business will also
assess their business rivals and fix business strategies
accordingly. This practice in turn will create a healthy
competitive market with the best value-added services
for the consumers Huda et al. (2019).
Another important aspect of the virtual platform is
accessibility Deem and Brahnmath (2018). At any given
time, consumers could effectively access to all the
nearby business services, get their offers, compare
among alternatives, favorite and log products and
searches, subscribe for new promotions/offers, can do in-
app communication and navigate themselves to the
business places. In short, providing the virtual mega mall
where they could get access to their desired services.
However, a platform of such purpose and scale often
suffers from a lack of user data privacy and protection
Zhang (2018). For instance, most of the major players on
the track, including Google, Apple, Amazon and E-Bay
collect and use users' personal data without their consent.
They often use such data to capture better market share
over their rivals. Nowadays, with growing concern, such
access to personalized data is highly denounced by
Internet users Yar (2018).
In this research, a virtual platform is proposed for a
micro business that is directing to a single point
references and get accessed to an attractive business
service domain. In addition, the platform is integrating a
state-of-the-art privacy protection service, named
MyGeoTrust Guinness et al. (2015). We argued here that
this integration would better protect users' data (for both
business and consumers) from infringement and
unauthorized access. To keep readers in sync, the
mandate of MyGeoTrust project Guinness et al. (2015)
is to offer a service that should provide privacy and
transparency in crowd-sourcing user personal and
location data as opposed to native platforms, e.g., Google.