Privacy and Location-Based Mobile Services

As commercial interest in LBS increases, legal and regulatory bodies are becoming increasingly interested in the extent to which use of LBS may affect individuals’ privacy. This chapter discusses the nature of the privacy-related issues arising from the use of commercial LBS and gives examples of approaches that might be taken to best address these issues from the perspective of users of LBS and commercial providers of LBS. It identifies and analyses some of the key privacy issues that arise from use of LBS and the ways in which these types of issues are being regulated in some jurisdictions. It also suggests some best-practice guidelines for how these issues might be best dealt with in order to ensure that individuals’ privacy is protected. Given the increasing importance of privacy issues to consumers and their likely reluctance to use commercial LBS if significant privacy concerns are not addressed, this chapter concludes that both consumers and commercial LBS providers will benefit from privacy concerns being addressed appropriately. This chapter identifies and analyzes these issues on a theoretical level so that the issues and approaches suggested may be useful to both privacy advocates and regulators and to providers of LBS, and will remain relevant as LBS become more sophisticated.