Government services and companies already collate a wealth of information on the population, ranging from social lifestyles to daily routines. Location based services promote improved safety services and a higher level of convenience for personal communications, but due to the nature of the technology there is a huge argument that privacy is being compromised.

The Federal Communications Commission mandate Enhanced 9-1-1, states that the latest mobile phones are to be shipped with GPS functionality, enough to support location based services. The technology is highly accurate and can determine the position of a device within 50 metres of its actual location.

For some people, the very fact these services can track a person’s movements and unveil their specific location is considered a privacy violation.

It’s not only the privacy industry, which are conscious about location based services. Amir Haramaty who is the chief operating officer at Nexus Telocation System Ltd said “When you start talking about having location based services on every device, it's scary; it's Big Brother technology”. Also German car manufacturers BMW, who have GPS technology installed in most of their production cars, are aware of the privacy concerns. "We don't track customers" said Francis Dance, project manager of telematics services at BMW.

See Professor Raper's comments about the latest developments in privacy enhancing technologies.

There are many stories in the media, which have tinted the use of this new technology by criminals. CBS News featured the story of Paul Seidler, who was arrested and charged for stalking his ex-girlfriend via the use of a GPS tracking device which he attached to the underside of her car. Seidler, 42 started tracking his former girlfriend after she asked him to vacate his apartment. He installed the device to the inside of her car’s bonnet and began tracking her movements to and from work. (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/06/tech/main539596.shtml)

Tracker, Paul Seidler.
Mugshots.com© 2008

With the addition of context aware technology, the police are now able to monitor and note changes in behavioral patterns of suspects. However if the technology allows criminals to be monitored what’s stopping the criminals from doing the same to us?

PhD student and lecturer at the University of Bedfordshire, Tim French says "a clear division" should be made between location based and context aware services. He didn’t think that location based services posed an intrusive threat in terms of locating via GPS, and gave the example that if the user is using the services to map a walking route then the very fact that they have chosen to use that particular service, shows user consent.

However, he stated that there is a major problem with consent within context aware services and when asked what his thoughts were, he stated ethical, trust and tangible security issues. 

When mapping context aware services within an urban context, large amounts of user data is transmitted and collated and to the unaware user it could be highly hazardous. More needs to be done in the form of tangible security. As some location and context aware services are transmitted without any encryption, third parties can intercept requests and messages such as SMS, store or modify the information and then retransmit it.

With further discussion into using advertising to target users, via services learning behavioral patterns of consumers, Mr French believes that users need to be aware when configuring devices, they know what information is being transmitted about themselves. Also there are questions as to how tangible the advertising messages are and whether or not mobile phishing could occur through illegitimate messages.  If this is the case then more needs to be done to strengthen the platform, and instant messaging algorisms need to be developed in order to combat such problems.

Professor Raper’s thoughts on context aware services.