General area or approximate location? How people understand location permissions

Huiqing Fu; Janne Lindqvist

doi:10.1145/2665943.2665957

General area or approximate location? How people understand location permissions

Huiqing Fu^*, Janne Lindqvist

^*Corresponding author for this work

Not published at Aalto University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference article in proceedings › Scientific › peer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

More than half of American adults use smartphones and about two thirds of them use location-based services. On Android smartphones, these location-based services are implemented by apps. Android phones provide two location-related permissions: "precise" location and "approximate" location. In this paper, we present an online survey of 106 Android users to investigate how people understand location descriptions related to their apps. Our results suggest that most participants considered the "precise" location to mean their exact location and the "approximate" location as a general area. This mental model of the "approximate" location seems to allay people's privacy concerns related to their apps. However, after participants were shown the ground truth of how accurate "approximate" location actually is, twice as many participants no longer thought "approximate" location offered enough protection, compared to before showing the ground truth. Our results indicate that the location permissions might mislead smartphone users about the privacy protections the apps are providing.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security
Publisher	ACM
Pages	117-120
Number of pages	4
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450331487
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/2665943.2665957
Publication status	Published - 3 Nov 2014
MoE publication type	A4 Conference publication
Event	ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security - Scottsdale, United States Duration: 3 Nov 2014 → 7 Nov 2014 Conference number: 13

Publication series

Name	Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security
ISSN (Print)	1543-7221

Conference

Conference	ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security
Abbreviated title	ACM CCS
Country/Territory	United States
City	Scottsdale
Period	03/11/2014 → 07/11/2014

Keywords

Android
Location permissions
Mental models
Privacy

Access to Document

10.1145/2665943.2665957

Cite this

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title = "General area or approximate location? How people understand location permissions",

abstract = "More than half of American adults use smartphones and about two thirds of them use location-based services. On Android smartphones, these location-based services are implemented by apps. Android phones provide two location-related permissions: {"}precise{"} location and {"}approximate{"} location. In this paper, we present an online survey of 106 Android users to investigate how people understand location descriptions related to their apps. Our results suggest that most participants considered the {"}precise{"} location to mean their exact location and the {"}approximate{"} location as a general area. This mental model of the {"}approximate{"} location seems to allay people's privacy concerns related to their apps. However, after participants were shown the ground truth of how accurate {"}approximate{"} location actually is, twice as many participants no longer thought {"}approximate{"} location offered enough protection, compared to before showing the ground truth. Our results indicate that the location permissions might mislead smartphone users about the privacy protections the apps are providing.",

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Fu, H & Lindqvist, J 2014, General area or approximate location? How people understand location permissions. in Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, ACM, pp. 117-120, ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, Scottsdale, Arizona, United States, 03/11/2014. https://doi.org/10.1145/2665943.2665957

General area or approximate location? How people understand location permissions. / Fu, Huiqing; Lindqvist, Janne.
Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security. ACM, 2014. p. 117-120 (Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference article in proceedings › Scientific › peer-review

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AU - Lindqvist, Janne

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AB - More than half of American adults use smartphones and about two thirds of them use location-based services. On Android smartphones, these location-based services are implemented by apps. Android phones provide two location-related permissions: "precise" location and "approximate" location. In this paper, we present an online survey of 106 Android users to investigate how people understand location descriptions related to their apps. Our results suggest that most participants considered the "precise" location to mean their exact location and the "approximate" location as a general area. This mental model of the "approximate" location seems to allay people's privacy concerns related to their apps. However, after participants were shown the ground truth of how accurate "approximate" location actually is, twice as many participants no longer thought "approximate" location offered enough protection, compared to before showing the ground truth. Our results indicate that the location permissions might mislead smartphone users about the privacy protections the apps are providing.

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ER -

General area or approximate location? How people understand location permissions

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Keywords

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