Location vs Privacy

Do you really want friends and family to know where you are all the time?

This has been a question doing the rounds for about 5 years since GPS technology made it practical on a cost/performance basis. I recall an early day market research panel where everyone thought it was wonderful that they could see where others were, but (shuffle of feet) many were less keen to be seen at all times themselves.

Its become an issue recently as mobile phones can now do this fairly ubiquitously - see this report in the NYT for eg) and this raises some major privacy issues - from the NYT article:

Kyna Fong, a 24-year-old Stanford graduate student, uses Loopt, offered by Sprint Nextel. For $2.99 a month, she can see the location of friends who also have the service, represented by dots on a map on her phone, with labels identifying their names. They can also see where she is.

One night last summer she noticed on Loopt that friends she was meeting for dinner were 40 miles away, and would be late. Instead of waiting, Ms. Fong arranged her schedule to arrive when they did. “People don’t have to ask ‘Where are you?’” she said.

One may ask why the friends weren't polite enough to tell her of course - but the article goes on to meatier stuff.

Ms. Fong can control whom she shares the service with, and if at any point she wants privacy, Ms. Fong can block access. Some people are not invited to join — like her mother.

“I don’t know if I’d want my mom knowing where I was all the time,” she said.

Some situations are not so clear-cut. What if a spouse wants some time alone and turns off the service? Why on earth, their better half may ask, are they doing that?

What if a boss asks an employee to use the service?

These were the issues that were being brought up 5 years ago. Parents were very keen on monitoring children, as you can imagine - and the kids far less keen. Also adults just did not like the idea of others having an expectation of knowing where they were all the time, and as the article above notes there can be "interesting" implications if you turn it off.

Interestingly, the devices being researched at the time never really took off (to my knowledge anyway).