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White Paper / Technical Report

When are Users Comfortable Sharing Locations with Advertisers?

Patrick Gage Kelley, Michael Benisch, Norman Sadeh, Lorrie Faith Cranor

CMU-CyLab-10-017, October 2010

October 2010

Published versionWhen Are Users Comfortable Sharing Locations with Advertisers?. Proceedings of the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '11), 2011 →

Abstract

As smartphones and other mobile computing devices have increased in ubiquity, advertisers have begun to realize a more effective way of targeting users and a promising area for revenue growth: location-based advertising. This trend brings to bear new questions about whether or not users will adopt products involving this potentially invasive form of advertising and what sorts of protections they should be given. Our real-world user study of 27 participants echoes earlier findings that users have significant privacy concerns regarding sharing their locations with advertisers. However, we examine these concerns in more detail and find that they are complex (e.g., relating not only to the quantity of ads, but the locations and times at which they are received). With advanced privacy settings, users stated they would feel more comfortable and share more information than with a simple opt-in/opt-out mechanism.

Cite this paper
@techreport{kelley2010when,
  title     = {When are Users Comfortable Sharing Locations with Advertisers?},
  author    = {Kelley, Patrick Gage and Benisch, Michael and Sadeh, Norman and Cranor, Lorrie Faith},
  year      = {2010},
  institution = {CMU-CyLab-10-017, October 2010},
  url       = {https://pgk.io/papers/2010-when-are-users-comfortable-sharing-locations-with/},
}
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