A method of providing a location of a target device to an application implementing a location based service includes receiving a request for a location of the target device from the application at a location server, the request including a location reference having a user reference referring to user information corresponding to the target device and stored in at least one data source. The method further includes retrieving the user information from the at least one data source using the user reference, determining the location of the target device based at least in part on the retrieved user information, and providing the determined location of the target device to the application.