The Value of Location Privacy
There is a Workshop on Privacy in The Electronic Society taking place at the beginning of November. We (George Danezis, Marek Kumpost, Vashek Matyas, and [Dan Cvrcek]) will present there results of A Study on the value of Location Privacy [link to http://www.buslab.org/index.php/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,33/func,fileinfo/id,163/parent,category/ no longer works] we have conducted a half year back.
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.
There’s quite a bit of great information at “A Study on The Value of Location Privacy,” at Light Blue Touchpaper. You can download the paper from “A Study on the value of Location Privacy” [http://www.buslab.org/index.php/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,33/func,fileinfo/id,163/parent,category/].
I have wondered about the privacy issues with services like Plazes which shows your location to the world (potentially). I know a few people who use it. I guess Plazes should be paying them to use the service 😉