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”. [Read more…] about Location tracking apps and privacy implications
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