It Is a Topic That Confuses Me - Privacy Perceptions in Usage of Location-Based Applications

Abstract

Location-based applications bring ever more possibilities for the users: finding a soulmate, locating good restaurants in vicinity, or tracking a lost phone. Benefits are abundant, but, whether the user realizes it or not, so are the risks. This raises questions about what the users of locationbased applications think happens with their location data, whether they see the usage as a tradeoff between benefits and risks, and whether they attempt to protect themselves from privacy risks. We conducted a set of semi-structured interviews (N = 41) with an explorative approach to investigate smartphone users' perceptions of location-based applications. Among other things, we investigated the benefits that have been experienced, the risks that cause concern, and the expectations of what happens with the location data. The data was then analyzed to further study the relationships between these concepts. Our results suggest that trusting individuals see more benefits in location-based applications than others, and on the other hand, those who express mistrust report more risks than others. Interestingly, participants with some limitations in their knowledge of location-based applications said more often than others that there are no risks in using location-based applications. On the other hand, participants with good knowledge seem to be protecting themselves from privacy risks more.

The Role of Privacy Violations in Privacy Calculus

“…Findings from an earlier interview study [10] identify various risks that users perceive in usage of LBS, reporting the frequency at which different privacy risks are mentioned. We find that the risks that were identified in the interview are also considered problematic by the participants of our online study.…”

“…Being bothered by locationbased advertisement was mentioned as a scenario that has a high likelihood, but causes little harm. In addition to these, Poikela and Kaiser identified several other risks that users of LBS worry about, including inappropriate secondary use of data, inappropriate data access, theft and identity theft [10]. Perceived benefits in location-based services have been reported by Tsai et al, with the following scenarios rated as the most likely and beneficial: 1.…”

Understanding the Valuation of Location Privacy: a Crowdsourcing-Based Approach

“…While it is likely that the real-life user of LBS does not have a full control of the integrity of their data flows [29] and thus cannot make a sound and fully informed value calculation, we make a simplification to concentrate on the accepted payment based on four different scenarios, leaving the assessment of knowledge and control to further studies. The users of the platform could take part in a task that had a base payment of 0.10 €, with a possible bonus mentioned.…”

“…Even more importantly than that, once the disclosure has happened, the user has no way of knowing what happens to the dataabout the possible subsequent use of the data, how it is being analyzed and aggregated with other information, and distributed to other parties. This leads to anxiety of control over one's personal information [10], to loss of contextual integrity when the information is handled and distributed contrary to the users' expectations [9], and to powerlessness in the absence of a reasonable, privacy preserving choice [29]. This study, however, did not take into account the complexity of location sharing, but made a simplification and assumed that the decision to share or not to share a location depends mainly on who is asking (and why), as well on the given payment.…”

Does This App Respect My Privacy? Design and Evaluation of Information Materials Supporting Privacy-Related Decisions of Smartphone Users

“…The literature review resulted in nine publications [1], [2], [5], [12], [17], [18], [21], [25], [27]. The misconceptions found in these publications can be summarized as follows:…”