Better to find than be found
Jinfo Blog

By Nancy Davis Kho

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New figures were released by the Pew Internet and American Life Project today pointing to increase utilisation of geolocation features like mapping and location-specific recommendations on smartphones by American adults. But the same study shows that the majority of users are still hesitant to explicitly reveal their own location.

The study of uptake of mobile and social location-based services found that 28% of mobile phone owners (23% of adults) are using some form of social location-based service, or looking for maps and directions on the go. 7% use location-specific data in conjunction with social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to provide a location for their updates.

Willingness to utilise the geolocation functionality of mobile phones is highest for users who have smartphones, are in the 18-49 age bracket, and who are non-white. The latter point underpins findings from prior Pew Research that African Americans and English-speaking Latinos tend to be the most active users of the mobile web. Pew research from 2010 found that mobile phone ownership is higher among African-Americans and Latinos than among whites (87% vs. 80%,) and minority mobile phone owners tend to undertake a broader set of activities with their mobile phones than do their white counterparts.

But only 4% of adults are active on sites like Gowalla or FourSquare which enable them to "check in" and broadcast their physical location to networks of friends and contacts. Seems that Americans prefer to use a mobile phone's geolocation capability to find out where they're going, not tell everyone where they are.

And the American Civil Liberties Union is winning the fight to keep such consumer location information private. Reuters yesterday reported that a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is upholding the 2010 decision that the US Justice Department must tell the public how it tracks suspects by mobile phone. The ACLU successfully argued that prosecutors have used the built-in GPS functionality of  mobile phones to shortcut the traditional warrant process to locate suspected criminals.

It's another case of our brave new world, where modern technological developments regularly bound ahead of legislation regarding privacy concerns. 

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