Privacy Issues in Location-Aware Mobile Devices

Location awareness, the ability to determine geographical position, is an emerging technology with both significant benefits and important privacy implications for users of mobile devices such as cell phones and PDAs. Location is determined either internally by a device or externally by systems and networks with which the device interacts, and the resultant location information may be stored, used, and disclosed under various conditions that are described. Thirteen specific privacy issues are enumerated and discussed as examples of the challenges we will face as these technologies and their associated products and services are deployed. Regulation by governments, standards organizations, industry groups, public interest groups, and marketplace forces are discussed as it may help address privacy issues.