Abstract
The thesis investigates how local privacy control mechanisms can
contribute to the development of intelligent and user-friendly
location-aware mobile services. Privacy issues arise naturally in
location-aware systems, since these systems often involve positioning
of people. These issues must be handled in order to conserve
individual privacy, and to build trust in location-aware systems.
Location data are sensitive because of the tight relationship between
location and context: where a person is can often say something about
what the person is doing. In order to conserve privacy in
location-aware computer systems, it is therefore important that users
retain control over their own location data. A combination of law
regulations and privacy-enabling mechanisms in the computer system is
necessary to allow for this control.
To demonstrate how local privacy control mechanisms can be
incorporated as a value-adding functionality in location-aware
applications, I have developed a prototype of a location-aware chat
application. Privacy control mechanisms included in the user device
itself are attractive because they may be used to manipulate location
data before they are disseminated to other parts of the computer
system.
The privacy mechanisms which have been incorporated in the prototype
allow the users to manipulate the quality of the location data they
share with their peers along three dimensions: accuracy, frequency and
delay. A user test that was conducted to evaluate the prototype shows
that the users appreciate the ability to control and manipulate data
about their own location.