Is your mobile phone giving away your location?

 

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Posted on 13 Jul 2010 at 11:46

According to research commissioned by Webroot, 39 per cent of mobile device users are revealing their exact location on the Internet or being tracked by geolocation applications.

Jeff Horne, Webroot's Director of Threat Research, notes that "people often get excited about the new features available on social networks and forget about the power of the Internet and the amount of valuable information they give away through the simple act of updating their status and ‘checking-in’ at their current location.”

Some services, like Google Latitude, require you to approve requests to share location information on a person-by-person basis. This makes it easy to only share information with trusted friends, although it's up to you to exercise responsibility and good judgement here.

However, posting your location along with your status on Twitter shares the information with the world in general, letting everyone know that your home is empty or that you're all alone in an unfamiliar place. Smartphone apps like Tweeps Around will show you the locations and posts of Twitter users in your vicinity.

In the last year, 30 per cent of UK respondents have shared their geographical location with people other than their friends, but many are actively aware of the potential risks. 52 per cent of respondents tag their whereabouts in a photograph online, thus revealing their location in an instant, thanks to the GPS photo-tagging capabilities of many phones.

52 per cent of UK respondents are very or extremely concerned about loss of personal privacy as a result of using geolocation applications and 41 per cent of people are aware and very or extremely concerned of letting potential burglars know when they are not at home. Women are particularly concerned about the risks associated with geolocation. In the UK, 46 per cent of women are highly concerned about letting a stalker know where they are, compared to only 27 per cent of men.

As with every new technology, personal responsibility is key to sharing live geolocation information sensibly. It's important to familiarise yourself with the privacy settings of both your phone and the social networking sites and applications you use.

If you want to keep your whereabouts private, disable settings and applications that allow geo-tagging. Only accept friend requests, emails and site links from people you know. Even then, be selective about who you "friend" and what you open or click, especially from people you don't know. Finally, as with anything you put online, never post anything that you wouldn't be happy to share with the entire world.

Author: Kat Orphanides