Exploring end user preferences for location obfuscation, location-based services, and the value of location

ABSTRACT

Long-term personal GPS data is useful for many UbiComp services such as traffic monitoring and environmental impact assessment. However, inference attacks on such traces can reveal private information including home addresses and schedules. We asked 32 participants from 12 households to collect 2 months of GPS data, and showed it to them in visualizations. We explored if they understood how their individual privacy concerns mapped onto 5 location obfuscation schemes (which they largely did), which obfuscation schemes they were most comfortable with (Mixing, Deleting data near home, and Randomizing), how they monetarily valued their location data, and if they consented to share their data publicly. 21/32 gave consent to publish their data, though most households' members shared at different levels, which indicates a lack of awareness of privacy interrelationships. Grounded in real decisions about real data, our findings highlight the potential for end-user involvement in obfuscation of their own location data.

References

1. }}Anthony, D., Henderson, .T and Kotz D., Privacy in Location-Aware Computing Environments, IEEE Pervasive Computing, vol. 6, 2007, pp. 64--72.
2. }}Agapie, E. et al. Seeing Our Signals: Combining location traces and web-based models for personal discovery. Proc. Hotmobile 2008.
3. }}Barkhuus, L. and Dey, A. K. Location-Based Services for Mobile Telephony: a study of users' privacy concerns. Proc. Interact 2003, 207--212.
4. }}Beresford, A. and Stajano, F. Location Privacy in Pervasive Computing. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 2(1):46--55, 2003.
5. }}Chen, M., et al. Practical Metropolitan-scale Positioning for GSM Phones. Proc. UbiComp 2006, Springer-Verlag.
6. }}Colbert, M. A Diary Study of Rendezvousing: Implications for Position-aware Communications for Mobile Groups. Proc. GROUP 2001. ACM Press 15--23, 2001.
7. }}Consolvo, S., Smith, I. E., Matthews, T., LaMarca, A., Tabert, J. & Powledge, P. Location Disclosure to Social Relations: Why, When, & What People Want to Share. Proc CHI 2005, ACM Press, 81--90.
8. }}Cvrcek, D. et al., A Study on the Value of Location Privacy. Proc. Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society. 2006, ACM 109--118.
9. }}Danezis, G., Lewis, S. and Anderson, R. How Much is Location Privacy Worth? Proc. 4th Workshop on the Economics of Information Security. Harvard University, 2005.
10. }}Dourish, P. and Anderson, K. Collective Information Practice: Exploring Privacy and Security as Social and Cultural Phenomena. Human-Computer Interaction 21(3), 2009, 319--342.
11. }}1Duckham, M. and Kulik, L. Location privacy and location-aware computing, In Dynamic & Mobile GIS: Investigating Change in Space and Time, CRC Press, 2006, 34--51.
12. }}Eagle, N., Pentland, A. and Lazer, D. Inferring Social Network Structure using Mobile Phone Data. Proc. National Academy of Sciences 106(36), 2009, 15274--15278.
13. }}Golle, P. and Partridge, K. On the Anonymity of Home/Work Location Pairs. Proc. Pervasive 2009, 390--397.
14. }}Gruteser, M. and Grunwald, D., Anonymous Usage of Location-Based Services Through Spatial and Temporal Cloaking. Proc. MobiSys 2003, ACM Press, 31--42.
15. }}Gruteser, M. and Hoh, B. On the Anonymity of Periodic Location Samples. Proc. 2nd International Conference on Security in Pervasive Computing. 2005, 179--192.
16. }}Hoh, B., et al., Preserving Privacy in GPS Traces via Uncertainty-Aware Path Cloaking. Proc. ACM CCS 2007.
17. }}Horvitz, E., Apacible, J., Sarin, R. and Liao, L. Prediction, Expectation, and Surprise: Methods, Designs, and Study of a Deployed Traffic Forecasting Service, Proc. UAI-2005.
18. }}Iachello, G., et al., Control, Deception, and Communication: Evaluating the Deployment of a Location-Enhanced Messaging Service, Proc. UbiComp 2005, Springer-Verlag, 213--231.
19. }}Kostakos, V. Using Bluetooth to capture passenger trips on public transport buses. arXiv:0806.0874, 2008.
20. }}Krumm, J. Inference Attacks on Location Tracks. Proc. Pervasive 2007, Springer-Verlag, 127--143.
21. }}Krumm, J. A survey of computational location privacy. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing (2009) 13:6, pp. 391--399.
22. }}Krumm, J. And Horvitz, E. Predestination: Inferring Destinations from Partial Trajectories. Proc. UbiComp 2006, Springer-Verlag.
23. }}Langheinrich, M. Privacy in Ubiquitous Computing. In: Ubiqutious Computing Fundamentals, Edited by John Krumm, 96--156.
24. }}Liao, L., Patterson, D., Fox, D. and Kautz, H. Learning and Inferring Transportation Routines. Artificial Intelligence, 2007.
25. }}Mulder, Y., Danezis, G., Batina, L., Preneel. B., Identification via location-profiling in GSM networks. Proc. Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society 2008. 23--32.
26. }}Palen, L. and Dourish, P. Unpacking "privacy" for a networked world. Proc. CHI 2003, ACM Press, 129--136.
27. }}Scott, J., Krumm, J., Meyers, B., Brush, A. J., and Kapoor, A. Home Heating Using GPS-Based Arrival Prediction. Microsoft Research Technical Report MSR-TR-2010-19, Feb 2010.
28. }}Shilton, K., Burke, J., Estrin, D., Hansen, M., Govindan, R., & Kang, J. Designing the Personal Data Stream: Enabling Participatory Privacy in Mobile Personal Sensing. Proc. TPRC. September 2009.
29. }}Shklovski, I., Vertesi, J., Troshynski, E. & Dourish, P. (2009) The commodification of location: Dynamics of power in location-based systems. Proc. UbiComp 2009, ACM Press. 11--20.
30. }}Tsai, J., Kelley, P., Cranor, L., and Sadeh, N. Location-Sharing Technologies: Privacy Risks and Controls. Proc. TPRC 2009.
31. }}Tsai, J. Y., Kelley, P., Drielsma, P., Cranor, L. F., Hong, J., and Sadeh, N. 2009. Who's viewed you?: the impact of feedback in a mobile location-sharing application. Proc. CHI '09. ACM Press, 2003--2012..

Index Terms

• Social and professional topics