Re: geolocation privacy statement strawman

I have one question and one comment:

On Mar 25, 2009, at 1:18 PM, Greg Bolsinga wrote:
> I'm going to make a counter argument. iPhone has CoreLocation. It  
> already has a very successful (30 million units shipped) privacy  
> policy. The user can decline using location services.
>
> Adding more options will only serve to muddle the matter. It is  
> currently very clear: the user says yes or the user says no. This  
> has proven to be a great solution for the thousands of applications  
> on the AppStore that are used by 30 million iPhone and iPod Touch  
> users.

Comment: This makes it sound as if you have 30 million users *because*  
of your privacy policy, and as if you have asked those users (and apps  
developers) about how "great" the privacy policy is. I would venture  
to guess that iPhone/iPod Touch sales actually have little to do with  
the privacy policy, and that a sizable subset of both users and apps  
developers would appreciate more granular choices. Take OpenTable for  
example -- when I'm on the road I might like to search for restaurants  
in my vicinity, but when I'm at home there might be no need to share  
my location since I know the name of the restaurant where I want to  
make a reservation. Right now there's no way to disable location  
sharing when I'm at home. You seem to be saying that the other  
implementors of this API shouldn't be encouraged to support this use  
case just because you decided not to support it and you sell a popular  
product.

Question (forgive my ignorance): Does/will the WebKit implementation  
on iPhone provide a single choice for all sites that want access to  
location (i.e., a single choice for all of Safari), or a per-site  
choice?

Alissa

Received on Saturday, 28 March 2009 17:22:26 UTC