Permission Method for Use of Smartphone Location Data with Emphasis on Users' Understanding

The permissions for releasing location data in smartphones are becoming more and more diverse for the purpose of preserving users' privacy. Despite giving more options to users, they are becoming more complex and difficult to understand. We conducted a large-scale survey and found that users themselves cannot understand what the resolution (accuracy) of the location data is or how often it is sent to service providers for each of the permissions. In addition, we found that users are over-sensitive to location data permissions due to their complexity and there is a gap between the ideal and reality in choosing permissions. To resolve these issues, we developed an application that allows users to confirm the location data being obtained. The user can thereby understand to what extent his/her own context is revealed by the acquired location data through the application. We asked 183 people to use the developed app and investigated the changes in the degree of their understanding of location data and their stance on giving permissions for using location data on their smartphones. The results showed that, for users who met certain conditions, the proposed app was positively effective in resolving the issues and was thus useful.