A Study on The Value of Mobile Location Privacy

Right in between Flickr's introduction of geotagging, the term stalkerazzi got its necessary attention, then again it entirely depends on you to evolve as a Web 2.0 user and add more value to the ongoing folksonomy, or realize the possible privacy implications.

Yesterday, Danezis Cvrcek and Matyas Kumpost released an interesting study on The Value of Location Privacy :

"This paper introduces results of a study into the value of location privacy for individuals using mobile devices. We questioned a sample of over 1200 people from five EU countries, and used tools from experimental psychology and economics to extract from them the value they attach to their location data. We compare this value across national groups, gender and technical awareness, but also the perceived difference between academic use and commercial exploitation. We provide some analysis of the self-selection bias of such a study, and look further at the valuation of location data over time using data from another experiment."

While there're indeed privacy issues related to mobile devices, in the age of malware authors purchasing commercial IP Geolocation services to get a better grasp of the infected sample, and Google's growing concern on the use of networks such as Tor mimicking possible malicious bahavior you should ask yourself, what is it that you're trying to achive, Anonymity or Privacy preservation online and go for it without feeling like a hostage.