1. Privacy and Identity Issues in
Context-Rich Mobile Community Services
Brussels, 29th March 2011
Dipl.-Wirt.-Inf.
Christian Kahl
Chair of Mobile Business & Multilateral Security
Goethe University Frankfurt
2. Introduction
Motivation
On-line social communities (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn) used ever more
Sharing of personal information (e.g. interests, pictures, places, etc.)
In addition: Mobile community services
Allow to participate in the community “any time, any place”
(e.g. Facebook Places, MySpace)
Make use of context information (e.g. location, time)
Enable a deeper integration of people’s virtual (mobile) and real world
communities (e.g. Loopt, Foursquare, Junaio, Aka-Aki, match2blue)
To finance such community services the infrastructure needs
to be open for marketing activities of advertisers
⇒ New approach to privacy and identity management in community
services needed
⇒ to meet the stakeholders’ different needs
⇒ Driven by users, applications, and examples
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3. Introduction
Approach
A new approach to privacy and identity management
for mobile communities
Driven by users, applications, and examples
Major Steps:
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4. PICOS Features
Implementing privacy: The PICOS Application Prototypes
Community Applications for Anglers and Gamers
Implementing new or enhancing existing user-centric
concepts for mobile communities
Advanced privacy and identity management features,
e.g.:
Partial Identities
Sub-Communities
Blurring
Private Site
MyFiles
Privacy Policies
Privacy Advisor
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5. PICOS Features
Partial Identities
Different Partial Identities
for different usage contexts
to reflect various roles of users
Limited set of personal information
disclosed for each Partial Identity
E.g. in different sub-communities,
Partial Identities support a user in hiding
and revealing elements of his personal
information.
Relation between the different
Partial Identities
is only visible for the user itself and
for the community operator
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6. PICOS Features
Blurring
Blurring of location data
Location is obfuscated on a map to
hide one’s own (exact) position, without being
completely invisible to others
allow only selected people to view the exact position
Users specify whether other users are able to see
their
exact position or
blurred position
Different levels of blurring
to control degree of obfuscation
(e.g., 1, 2, or 5 km)
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7. PICOS Features
Private Site
Invisible in previously defined areas
User can set private site on the map
to hide one’s own position, without being
completely invisible to others
to allow only selected people to view the current position
within a previous defined area
Users specify which other users are able to see
their position
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8. PICOS Features
Privacy Advisor
Provides privacy related guidance to users
e.g. regarding sharing of location info or
publishing of sensitive personal data
Context sensitive
provides hints in situations when personal information of users
is involved (e.g. profile editing)
Aims to help users
managing their privacy
to create awareness of privacy related
aspects within mobile communities
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9. PICOS Features
Privacy Policies
Enables users to selectively define Policies
in order to control who is allowed to see certain personal
information
User can determine which
information is available to
other users in a defined situation.
Different types of Policies
Policies can be defined for users’
presence, location, and profile
attributes.
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11. Outlook
Aspects of future research
Marketing/Advertising in Communities
Location Based Advertising
Addressing groups/communities instead
of single users
Users automatically being used as implicit “testifiers”
Mobile (Group) Recommender Systems
Usage of community members’ profile information
Context-related use of profile information
Integration in (mobile) community services
Mobile (Device) Sensing
Usage of (continuously) sensed data in e.g. communities
Automatic (unconscious) delivery of data
Pre-defined policies (?)
picos@m-chair.net
www.picos-project.eu
www.twitter.com/picos_project
www.facebook.com/picos.project 11
12. Project Facts
Start: 01-Feb-2008
Duration: 3.5 years
Balanced mixture of industrial and academic
partners
Coordinator: Goethe University Frankfurt
Receives funding from European Commission 7th
Framework Programme
www.picos-project.eu
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