2010

Privacy Issues of the W3C Geolocation API

Nick Doty, Deirdre K. Mulligan and Eric Wilde. (2010). Privacy Issues of the W3C Geolocation API. UC Berkeley: School of Information. Report 2010-038. http://escholarship.org/uc/item/0rp834wf

Abstract

The W3C's Geolocation API may rapidly standardize the transmission of location information on the Web, but, in dealing with such sensitive information, it also raises serious privacy concerns. We analyze the manner and extent to which the current W3C Geolocation API provides mechanisms to support privacy. We propose a privacy framework for the consideration of location information and use it to evaluate the W3C Geolocation API, both the specification and its use in the wild, and recommend some modifications to the API as a result of our analysis.

Research Area(s)

Last updated: September 20, 2016