Secure private location based services

Representative embodiments disclose unique mechanisms to use beacons to provide access to cloud services. In order to access the cloud services a user presents a beacon identifier obtained from a beacon in geographic proximity to a user device used by the user. An authentication service receives the beacon identifier and issues an authentication challenge to the user. Upon successfully completing the authentication challenge, the user is granted access to the cloud service. Authentication challenges can include single factor, two factor, or nominal security challenges. Some embodiments require the device to submit GPS data verifying the location of the device. Some embodiments check user identifying information against a set of approved users. Some embodiments allow a user's device to act as a beacon to access the cloud service. Cloud services can include a wide variety of collaboration, productivity, help, mapping and other services.