Category: Geolocation Technology

Recent revelations are shocking smartphone owners who are finding that their locations are being collected.

It has now been revealed that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) is using geolocation technology to track the location of billions of mobile phones around the world every day, even though it looks as though a very small fraction of one percent of the data is ever actually used.

It is estimated that this tech is collecting location data for around 5 billion different devices each day.

The massive NSA database currently includes “at least hundreds of millions of devices” according to reports that have been made by The Washington Post. This data is used to allow authorities to be able to use geolocation technology to locate “cellphones anywhere in the world, retrace their movements and expose hidden relationships among the people using them.”

The use of the geolocation technology for data collection by the NSA is labeled as “incidental”.

Incidental data collection is a legal term that describes a result that is “foreseeable but not deliberate” by the company that is obtaining the information. That said, the activities of the NSA have been heavily criticized by privacy groups. For example, the American Civil Liberties Union released a statement that said “It is staggering that a location-tracking program on this scale could be implemented without any public debate.”

They also added to their statement that the “dragnet surveillance” that is going on to collect data regarding hundreds of millions of mobile devices “flouts our international obligation” for respecting the privacy rights of everyone from Americans to those from other countries.

These most recent discoveries have occurred at nearly the same time that Microsoft had revealed that it intends to implement greater methods of encryption. At the same time, they have been labeling the snooping from the government as being an “advanced persistent threat” when compared to cyber attacks and malware.

From among the information that is collected by the NSA through geolocation technology, they insist that only “a tiny fraction of 1 percent” is actually ever used, as the agency uses a powerful analytical program (known as Co-Traveler) in order to determine which targets to actually observe.

The research has indicated that geolocation technology may not be as warmly received as some anticipated.

A nonprofit global IT association, ISACA, has just released the outcomes of its location based marketing survey and has discovered that many consumers are uncomfortable with this type of communication as they are concerned about their privacy.

The study looked into the opinions of approximately 4,000 consumers in four different countries.

The research was conducted regarding the holiday shopping habits of consumers in the United Kingdom, the United States, Mexico, and India and their opinions on privacy and other issues such as location based marketing through the use of geolocation technology. The findings indicated that the feelings regarding the use of these techniques differ from one place to another.

The consumers in the United Kingdom and India had the greatest resistance to location based marketing techniques.

In those two countries, the respondents were the least likely to want to receive advertising and promotional messages from stores and brands through the geolocation technology on their smartphones. These included unrequested discount coupons, SMS messages about discount offers, and other communications that are sent automatically when a consumer walks near – or into – a store. In both the U.K. and India, 70 percent of consumers felt that they felt that this type of activity is invasive.

In all four of the participating countries, the data on the IT Risk/Reward Barometer indicated that consumers feel that receiving a text message from a business as they walk by the store is nearly as invasive as if they were to step into a store and a clerk would address them by name even if they had never met. In the U.K., 69 percent of the survey participants would have been happy to receive a mobile coupon in order to receive a bargain, but 47 percent of them would not be pleased if a shop assistant who was a stranger addressed them by name.

Among all of the countries, consumers were more receptive of receiving special discount codes through location based marketing than they were in receiving a text to inform them of special offers that may not feel are relevant to them.