RE: Mobile Location Based Service user privacy (commercial issue)

Hi John,

> Exactly - we ran up against this problem with the SPATIAL BOF. One
> option is NEVER to transport your location to anyone. I'm not
> advocating this - but someone will raise this.

The only possibility I see, is to use different pseudonyms with different
parties one is in contact with. These pseudonyms must neither be linkable to
each other (i.e. nobody can see, that two different pseudonyms refer to the
same person) nor to the user's real identity.

Thus, only those parties knowing the same pseudonym can exchange and
aggregate the user's location information. Other parties, that know the user (and
his location information) under a different pseudonym cannot collaborate and
aggregate more location information than the user is willing to disclose.

Again, there will remain the possibility that some pseudonyms are revealed
(accidently or with purpose by other communication paths), thus allowing to
link them (and the respective location information) to a single user.

Actually, this approach cannot totally prevent the problem of sharing
information with other parties (as this will not be possible), but I think it will
provide the user with a means to control it to a certain degree.

Best regards,

Christian Hauser

Institute of Communication Networks and Computer Engineering
University of Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 47, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany

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