Re: Intended usage notification

On Apr 21, 2009, at 7:25 AM, Doug Turner wrote:

> On Apr 21, 2009, at 1:07 AM, Max Froumentin wrote:
>
>> Doug Turner <doug.turner@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> sorry, Henning is right.  I only speak for myself and +1 what greg
>>> said, what andrei said, what Ian said, and what Max said.
>>
>> I can't say I disagree with Nick though, especially after I've  
>> discussed the problem with local user interaction experts.
>>
>> When I start the camera app on my iphone, I get the pop up asking  
>> if the app can use my location. That's annoying, because I usually  
>> want to take a picture quickly. Now if the camera app wanted to  
>> explain why it wanted my position, you'd have another pop-up  
>> beforehand saying "I would like to use your position in order to  
>> tag your picture, so please click yes on the next prompt". 2 modal  
>> dialogues before I can actually snap. Not nice.
>>
>> So at this point the best I can think of is 1 dialogs containing  
>> something like:
>>
>> "This app wants to use your location. It says:" (familiar yellow  
>> bar style)
>> "Click yes if you'd like your pictures tagged with lat/lon" (some  
>> other style showing that text is not from the browser).
>>
>> Not great. Maybe there's a solution that mitigates better user  
>> experience and privacy.
>>
>> Max.
>
> Hey Max,
>
> That works great because the application on your iphone has been  
> reviewed by Apple.  We are talking about the web and website do not  
> have that sort of hoop to jump through -- most are untrusted.
>
> If we are talking about widgets which have similar vetting that  
> iphone application seem to get, then i would tend to agree -- or  
> more so -- I would say that the dialog should be completely  
> optional :-)  In fact, doesn't the iphone "this app wants to... "  
> dialog go away after a few times uses the app.
>
> Doug
>

Hi Doug,

I'd strongly oppose making this dialog completely optional, even for  
applications that have gone through Apple's (or some other 3rd  
party's) vetting process.  Again, we're not talking about "good guys"  
and "bad guys" -- there are plenty of legitimate applications that may  
want my location information but I should still have control over  
whether or not to reveal my location to them.  Alissa brought up the  
example earlier of location-based ads: even though DoubleClick has  
good business practices, I still might not want to let it store my  
location forever just to get a slightly more relevant ad.

Along the same lines, I hope that the "prearranged trust relationship"  
described in the Policy section doesn't cover these sorts of "vetted"  
apps.  I think Apple correctly recognized that users would be very  
uncomfortable if any app could access their location at any time  
without notice, even if those apps had all gone through Apple's  
vetting process.

I'm definitely interested in novel ways that the User Agent can  
present this usage notification to the user.  Max suggested a  
different style of text for the unstructured text field.  Also,  
earlier I suggested using structured fields rather than unstructured  
text: maybe the application could just specify how long it was going  
to keep the data and whether or not it would be shared with others.   
That doesn't give the user quite as much context, but perhaps it  
correspondingly decreases the site's ability to deceive.  Are there  
other suggestions here?

Thanks,
Nick

Received on Tuesday, 28 April 2009 06:33:28 UTC