Two Views on Apple’s Plans for iPhone Location Data
There are two views on Apple’s plan for location data on the iPhone. Mobile Beat notes the privacy questions that could arise from Apple’s new iPhone operating system (to be released this summer), which includes changes that would allow applications to constantly track a person’s location:
It’s a change that promises new features that iPhone users have yet to experience — like automatic notifications when friends are less than a half-mile away.
But it will also renew myriad privacy concerns about behavioral ad targeting. Plus, app developers may face new legal quandaries if they’re subpoenaed by government officials and asked to hand over your location history. A deep-pocketed company like Google or AT&T might demand due process before turning over data, but what about the two-man band behind your favorite iPhone app? [...]
This raises a lot of privacy implications on several fronts. Location-sensitive ads represent a huge opportunity for marketers that is much more accountable than other traditional forms of brand advertising. McDonald’s could theoretically serve 10,000 people mobile ads in a city and receive analytics showing what percentage of them later actually went and visited a McDonald’s — whether that might be 24 hours or three months later. That’s much more measurable than buying a 30-second spot on TV, which can’t return granular data on how it affected purchasing behavior.
Brands and local businesses are clamoring for analytics like this, and location startups like Foursquare and Loopt have experimented a bit in this space. Foursquare launched an analytics dashboard for local businesses last month, which shows a place’s top visitors and most recent check-ins.
The New York Times focuses on Apple’s plans for privacy controls for iPhone location data:
So today, when Apple gave a preview of the next version of the iPhone operating system, it was great to hear about the new features that could help consumers cope with the privacy and security issues involving location-based services. [...]
Apple has long provided pop-ups that ask users to approve an app’s use of location information before that app can get access. said But at the preview, Scott Forstall, Apple’s senior vice president of iPhone software, said, “We’re taking privacy several steps further” with iPhone OS 4.
To make it clearer just how often approved apps are collecting data about users’ physical whereabouts, Apple will display an arrow in the status bar at the top of the screen, right next to the battery-life indicator, whenever a user’s location is being tracked.
Mr. Forstall said users would also get “fine-grained settings,” akin to those provided for choosing how notifications are delivered, that will let you disable or enable location data-gathering on an app-by-app basis. You will also see an arrow if an app has asked for location information in the last 24 hours. That way, if you don’t like what’s going on, or don’t want to be tracked when you want to keep your location private, you can revoke access at any time.
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