Mobile Intelligence

10.7 LOCATION PRIVACY

Already the fact that LBSs make it technically possible to determine a target's current location raises manifold ethical concerns that deserve profound public discussing. Doubtless, privacy awareness of an LBS is one key requirement for being accepted by its users and thus for being successful in the marketplace. In short, location privacy refers to the capability of the target person to exercise control about who may access her location information in which situation and in which level of detail. Basically, three different types of access can be distinguished.

First, actors that are not actively involved in the operation of an LBS typically fall into the class of intruders, which can be kept away by applying appropriate security mechanisms for authenticating the LBS actors among each other and for securing communication channels. Fortunately, such mechanisms are widely available and known to be reliable. An exception, however, where access by third parties cannot be circumvented is the so-called lawful interception by authorities or intelligence services. In many parts of the world, processing the user's private data in order to prevent or discover criminal activities is in accordance with local law, and service providers are obliged to support the government with that task.

A second class of privacy risks stems from possible malignant behavior of intermediate actors within the LBS supply chain, like the location provider or the LBS provider. For example, ...