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Are you familiar with tools such as Facebook Places, yelp and Twitter?
Perhaps you’ve ‘checked in’ with FourSquare and Gowalla or broadcast your
whereabouts on Google Latitude. Perhaps you’ve sought a new relationship on
Skout, gone shopping on ShopKick or played online games with SCVNGR. These are
just a few of the multitude Location Based Services (LBS) that are being used to
share your location, broadcast your dating status and find the shopping item of
your dreams using your mobile phone. LBS are the emerging set of applications
and services people can access from their internet enabled mobile devices.
Your first concern when utilizing LBS may be
concerning your privacy and the lack of it. Before you agree to allow the last
bit of perceived privacy remaining to slip away, consider some additional common
uses of LBS:
- Turn by turn navigation
- Recommending social events
- Finding nearby ATM’s,
Restaurants, etc…
- Locating and tracking
friends and family on a map
- Geo-Targeted coupons for
gas, coffee, etc…
- Gaming
Still unconvinced? LBS allow
for numerous other modern day conveniences including up to the minute parcel
and vehicle tracking, personalized weather reports and location based mobile
advertising. The push in the US for locating subscribers stems from a 1996
Federal Communication Commission (FCC) decree called the E911 mandate stating:
‘companies must adopt technology to pinpoint the location of subscribers making
emergency 911 calls.’
There are multiple techniques
used to pinpoint the actual location of a mobile phone subscriber, each with
differing accuracy and time constraints. Using either handset or cellular
network based approaches allows for signal strength to be determined using
variant triangulation techniques. Utilizing cell towers provides accuracy to
approximately 500 meters and can be achieved with only one tower. Using third
party Wi-Fi node mapping software, signal strength is measured to compute where
your phone is transmitting from to within 30 meters. The most accurate way to
access your location using your mobile device is GPS satellite. Phones with GPS components are accurate to within 10 meters. However, using GPS satellite
can be difficult when indoors or in highly developed urban areas due to signal
interference.
Most consumers are open to
having their location tracked, they just want to be aware when it’s happening. Comfortable
with the eroding level of privacy and happy with the service tradeoffs provided
through LBS many consumers openly broadcast their whereabouts on social
networks. While civil rights groups question the legality of fleet tracking
applications and public safety officials stress the importance of knowing your
whereabouts, there are as many reasons to log off as check in. The safety of
your home and family is something you must consider when broadcasting your
whereabouts over the internet. However, on the upside, there may be a coupon in
it for you.
Sources:
http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2011/04/27/apple-filed-a-patent-application-in-2009-for-what-its-now-calling-a-bug/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/location-based_service
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/17-02/lp_guineapig?currentPage=all
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/11/smartphone-users-arent-very-geo-centric/
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/04/iphone-location-bug/
http://techpp.com/2011/01/15/5-weak-points-of-location-sharing-services/
http://techpp.com/2011/01/17/top-10-location-based-service-providers/
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