Analyzing Use of Privacy Policy Attributes in a Location Sharing Application

Abstract

Privacy in location sharing applications is particularly important due to the sensitivity of users' geographical location. Privacy in most location sharing applications is provided through relatively simple functionality where users have to specify which friends they are willing to share their location with. This approach may not be adequate to fully express users' privacy requirements. In this short article, we present results obtained with a privacy preserving location sharing application, where users are given the option of specifying location disclosure preferences that reflect recurring scenarios, using attributes such as days of the week, times of the day or specific locations. Our results indicate that, while many users tend to start with relatively simple policies similar to those they could specify using today's applications, over time they seem to increasingly refine these policies and take advantage of time and location restrictions.