To try to help consumers understand and navigate the services and their privacy implications, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission will conduct a public education forum on June 28 at F.C.C. headquarters in Washington, the agencies said on Tuesday.

Location-based services can be used to find, for example, a nearby restaurant, or to compare sale prices for an item with those at nearby stores. The technology is also being developed for use by public safety entities for emergency response. But regulators fear that privacy concerns might stunt the adoption and use of the services.

Representatives from consumer advocacy groups, mobile-phone companies, technology companies and equipment makers are scheduled to attend the forum to discuss how location-based services work, their benefits and risks, industry best practices and things consumers and parents need to know about their own or their children’s use of the technology.

Public comments can be submitted electronically before the meeting on the F.C.C.’s Web site or by mail; there will also be a short question-and-answer session at the event, an agency spokeswoman said.

The forum follows several Congressional hearings on privacy and mobile-phone data. Another one scheduled for Thursday by the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection will feature an F.T.C. official and executives from Apple, Google and Facebook, among others.

Source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/congress-hears-from-apple-and-google-on-privacy/

Over half of UK consumers are not comfortable with businesses using location-based technology to pinpoint their whereabouts, according to the latest research from Ovum.
Some 61 per cent of respondents expressed concern about the use of the technology, even when it would improve customer service.

“Consumers to date have very little experience with the location-based services in the context of customer service,” said Ian Jacobs, Ovum analyst.

“So, it is not bad experiences, but rather pervasive concerns about privacy that are creating concerns around location data being misused by businesses,” he added.

“To create a sense of trust, businesses must become more transparent on how the data will be put to use, and show customers some demonstrable value when using location-based services for customer care.”

Only one-fifth of UK consumers are comfortable sharing their location with companies.

The survey also highlighted that only 12 per cent of consumers had used social media for customer services, and 73 per cent said they were doubtful they would use social media sites in the future for customer support activities.

Source: http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2074892/people-wary-location-services-ovum#ixzz1NyAFEHy2

“The answer to this problem is not ending location-based services. No one up here wants to stop Apple or Google from producing their products or doing the incredible things that you do. What today is about is trying to find a balance between all those wonderful benefits and the public’s right to privacy.” – Senator Al Franken

Within the past few decades, advances in global positioning technology have made it increasingly difficult to keep information about a person’s location private. The usage of global positioning systems (GPS) in automobiles has become commonplace, and nearly eighty percent of phones incorporate GPS tracking. Through a combination of GPS and cell phone triangulation, cellular companies can closely approximate a person’s location. The recent discovery of stored location data in the Apple iPhone and other smartphones has reignited privacy concerns associated with GPS.

The iPhone scandal has highlighted a need for increased protection of consumer privacy. However, it is important that, in procuring those protections, legislators do not significantly reduce the efficacy of GPS. In our website and presentation, we will discuss the societal and individual benefits of GPS as well as the strengths and limitations of current privacy legislation. We will explore cases where corporations and governments have infringed upon the consumer’s right to privacy in the past and use these cases to suggest additional legislation that could prevent further abuse of GPS data in the future.

In the past couple months, Apple has come under fire for logging a year’s worth of location data, accessible on anyone’s iPhone. Google has also admitted to caching similar location data on the Android.

The iPhoneTracker app, developed by Pete Warden, maps the location data logged by your iPhone for the past year. While most cell phone providers store similar data behind firewalls, this information is available quickly and easily when a user downloads the app.