Location Tracking Apps and Privacy Implications

How much personal information can our phone apps gather through location tracking? To answer this question, two researchers - Mirco Musolesi (University of Bologna, Italy) and Benjamin Baron (University College London, UK) - carried out a field study using an app specifically developed for this research. Through the app employed in the study - published in Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies - researchers were able to identify which kind of personal information the app extracted and its privacy sensitivity according to users.

"Users are largely unaware of the privacy implications of some permissions they grant to apps and services, in particular when it comes to location-tracking information", explains Mirco Musolesi. "Thanks to machine learning techniques, these data provide sensitive information such as the place where users live, their habits, interests, demographics, and information about users' personalities".

This is the first extensive study shedding light on the range of personal information that can be inferred from location-tracking data. Consequently, the study also shows how collecting such information can represent a violation of the users' privacy. To this end, the researchers developed a mobile application - TrackingAdvisor - that continuously collects user location. From the location data, the app can extract personal information and asks users to give feedback on the correctness of such information as well as to rate its relevance in terms of privacy sensitivity.

69 users participated in the study and used TrackAdvisor for at least two weeks. TrackAdvisor tracked more than 200,000 locations, identifying approximately 2,500 places and collecting almost 5,000 pieces of personal information concerning both demographics and personality. Among the data gathered, the users find that the most sensitive pieces of information were the ones about health, socio-economic situation, ethnicity, and religion.

"We think it is important to show users the amount and quality of information that apps can collect through location tracking", continues Musolesi. "Equally important for us is to understand whether users think that sharing information with app managers or marketing firms is acceptable or deem it a violation of their privacy".

According to the researchers, analyses like this pave the way to designing targeted advertising systems that help users protect their privacy, especially with the data they deem more sensitive.

"Thanks to such systems, users interested - for example - in protecting information about their own health could receive a notification each time they go to a health clinic or hospital", confirms Musolesi. "But there is more. This could also lead to the development of systems that can automatically block the collection of sensitive data from third parties thanks to previously defined privacy settings".

Benjamin Baron, Mirco Musolesi.
Where You Go Matters: A Study on the Privacy Implications of Continuous Location Tracking.
Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, 2020. doi: 10.1145/3432699

Most Popular Now

MEDICA 2024 + COMPAMED 2024: Adapted Hal…

11 - 14 November 2024, Düsseldorf, Germany. The final preparations for MEDICA 2024 and COMPAMED 2024 in Düsseldorf have begun. A total of more than 5,500 exhibitors from approximately 70 countries...

AI does Not Necessarily Lead to more Eff…

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in hospitals and patient care is steadily increasing. Especially in specialist areas with a high proportion of imaging, such as radiology, AI has long...

Commission Joins Forces with Venture Cap…

The Commission has launched a Trusted Investors Network bringing together a group of investors ready to co-invest in innovative deep-tech companies in Europe together with the EU. The Union's investment...

Why the NHS is Seeking to Make Media Ser…

Opinion Article by Dean Moody, Healthcare Services Director, Airwave Healthcare. Tim Kelsey and Martha Lane Fox called for WiFi to be made available free of charge throughout the NHS back in...

An AI-Powered Pipeline for Personalized …

Ludwig Cancer Research scientists have developed a full, start-to-finish computational pipeline that integrates multiple molecular and genetic analyses of tumors and the specific molecular targets of T cells and harnesses...

Wearable Cameras Allow AI to Detect Medi…

A team of researchers says it has developed the first wearable camera system that, with the help of artificial intelligence (AI), detects potential errors in medication delivery. In a test whose...

Philips and Medtronic Advocacy Partnersh…

Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA), a global leader in health technology, and Medtronic Neurovascular, a leading innovator in neurovascular therapies, today announced a strategic advocacy partnership. Delivering timely stroke...

AI could Transform How Hospitals Produce…

A pilot study led by researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine found that advanced artificial intelligence (AI) could potentially lead to easier, faster and more efficient...

New AI Tool Predicts Protein-Protein Int…

Scientists from Cleveland Clinic and Cornell University have designed a publicly-available software and web database to break down barriers to identifying key protein-protein interactions to treat with medication. The computational tool...

Great Start for Ideas and Innovations: D…

8 - 10 April 2025, Berlin, Germany. From 15 October to 15 November 2024, the DMEA invites experts from business, science, politics and practice to actively participate in shaping the congress...

Start-Ups will Once Again Have a Starrin…

11 - 14 November 2024, Düsseldorf, Germany. The finalists in the 16th Healthcare Innovation World Cup and the 13th MEDICA START-UP COMPETITION have advanced from around 550 candidates based in 62...

AI for Real-Rime, Patient-Focused Insigh…

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but still... they both have a lot of work to do to catch up to BiomedGPT. Covered recently in the prestigious journal Nature...