Categories: control • retract

Decoupling [content] and location information visibility

Contents

[Also Known As]

Suggested: Retroactive Location Sharing

Context

Users often share content in socially oriented services on the Internet. The applications used for uploading this content may attach location information. Controllers can use or publicize this information, allowing others to use it. Sufficient correlations can infringe upon the user's privacy expectations.

The organization in question (likely the controller) does not wish to undermine these expectations, and seeks to enable the user to assign contextually specific privacy settings.

Problem

Concerns about disclosing location information conflict with the appeal of location information for [content] organization.

Forces/Concerns

  • Location is highly indicative of life patterns and significant contexts of the users' daily lives.
  • Location data is increasingly available in various consumer devices.
  • Users want streamlined processes for organizing their content in socially oriented services. That simplicity could be achieved by using location automatically.
  • Users do not want to set privacy requirements every time they generate content, nor to sweepingly deny all sharing if they intend to use the service.

Solution

Allow users to retroactively decide upon the disclosure of location information with respect to the context of the particular content. Record location information by default, but do not automatically share it.

[Structure]

Give users an interface or control to configure an access policy regarding the privacy of location information. That is, a place where users may, granularly or in bulk, define who may access location information of their content.

[Implementation]

A basic solution could feature an interface or control for selecting the allowed users from all the types of users of the socially oriented service (e.g. built-in or user-defined groups, individuals, or anonymous users). This control could apply to individual content, or to multiple selections, or groups.

Prior to this grant of additional consent the content itself, or versions containing location, might only be available by unpublished Private Link. The protection of the content itself is however not the focus of this pattern.

If a user chooses, certain individuals or groups may have default access to the attached location information. Default access like this, however, invalidates the following approach.

Removing Controller Trust Requirement

An extended solution may aim to be further privacy preserving.

The service may accept ciphertext as the location coupled with the content. When (and only if) the user chooses to make that specific location accessible, their client-side device decrypts the location and provides the service with the plaintext location.

The user may choose how granular the location is before the service receives it. In this way, by default the controller only needs Lawful Consent to store the content itself. This solution, like many, is dependent on the trustworthiness of the client's own device.

Consequences

Benefits

  • Users can define in one place, or where contextually relevant, the granular privacy settings for the location information of their content.
  • Users do not need to consider settings when generating content, only later when sharing them, or if they choose, automatically with select individuals or groups.

Liabilities

  • If users do not configure the policy, then the default configuration shares nothing and the service is not being used.
  • Users could require fine-grained location configuration, such as how specific the location is per content. This could be addressed with additional settings.
  • This pattern assumes the controller is trustworthy, as all location information attached to the content is still given to the service. Alternatively, the service could endeavor to by default also restrict its own access to the information (e.g. client-side decryption).

[Constraints]

By applying this pattern the controller prevents location access by default, and thus risks a low location sharing rate. This is due to the tendency of users to leave settings in the default state. However, depending on the effort, the controller may encourage positive public image, and raise adoption overall.

Examples

  • Flickr (basic implementation)
  • Twitter (basic implementation)
  • Facebook (basic implementation)

This pattern is one of various foundations for Support Selective Disclosure, and thus may be used by it. This pattern must use Lawful Consent however, as information is recorded by default and only interacted with afterward. This requires the users true and informed approval.

Decoupling [content] and location information visibility may be complemented by the use of a Private Link. This could allow location information sharing with specific unauthenticated individuals, retaining the ability to decide later.

The pattern complements Discouraging Blanket Strategies, which considers having a different privacy level for any content posted while this pattern mentions the privacy level for the location of that content.

It also complements Negotiation of Privacy Policy. The latter defines privacy settings at the beginning. This pattern however gives the chance to change privacy settings every time content is being shared.

Additionally, this pattern refines Reasonable Level of Control. It provides means of control for location attached to content, so it complies with the the latter's solution in a more specific scenario.

Finally, this pattern may use the Buddy List pattern. The location information could be seen by different types of users, one of them could be featured in a Buddy List or one of its user/search directories.

[Sources]

Based on:

S. Ahern, D. Eckles, N. Good, S. King, M. Naaman, and R. Nair, “Over-Exposed ? Privacy Patterns and Considerations in Online and Mobile Photo Sharing,” CHI ’07, pp. 357–366, 2007.