MapSafe QGIS plugin offers location privacy mechanisms for users to protect their datasets before publishing or putting them on maps. The plugin leverages all these security functions in a workflow to offer a complete geoprivacy approach from their familiar desktop application.
Users can first use geomasking or hexabinning to obfuscate coordinates, provisioning access to data at lower levels of accuracy.
The resulting datasets, having different levels of detail are then protected using symmetric key encryption, while the passphrase
itself is protected using public key encryption. permitting only intended parties to decrypt it. Finally, to complete the security process,
the final encrypted volume's filename and hash value are notarised on the blockchain as a public record.
Data recipients can use the notarised record to verify the encrypted volume's originality and the original dataset therein,
before decrypting and accessing it.
The plugin aims to solve geoprivacy challenges, not currently addressed in other desktop GIS software, by combining security functions
into a single workflow and graphical environment in QGIS.
Our QGIS-based geoprivacy plugin replicates and advances our recent browser-based geoprivacy tool of the same name https://www.mapsafe.xyz . The ``MapSafe: A complete tool for achieving geospatial data sovereignty'' paper describes how the tool offers a complete approach for sovereign data owners to safeguard sensitive geospatial data by anonymising, encrypting, and notarising it. This QGIS plugin replicates the funcationality within QGIS for a reliable geoprivacy tool for desktop applications.