RE: Geolocation: Security and Privacy

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-----Original Message-----
From: public-geolocation-request@w3.org [mailto:public-geolocation-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of timeless
Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2008 8:42 PM
To: public-geolocation@w3.org
Subject: Re: Geolocation: Security and Privacy


I think that start is fairly insufficient.

I'm looking for a suggestion where the user can specify a location or path that they want to be seen as taking.

if I'm talking to a dining aware site, i want to be able to say "I'm walking around downtown Vancouver" even though I'm on some other continent (I am, but I will be in Vancouver, so this is a perfectly reasonable thing for me to want to do).

I've played with this problem for a while now and concluded that simply offering an alternate location isn't helpful as sites or other observers will conclude it's phony. Users can of course pick a stationary path which would be equivalent to a fixed location, but it should be available from a path option.

[AlecB] I don't think this requires any special functionality to the API itself - the user should have control over what providers are being used. Therefore the user can install a 'arbitrary location' provider that would specify anywhere.

I think your definition for "opt-out" is confusing. "out by default; requires opt in"
[AlecB] What I meant was that if the user did not expressively and deliberately give permissions to a site, no location data would be given to it. If "Stalker.com" requests location data from the API, it should fail by default until the user grants it access.

UI alert should probably be suggested as an indicator "this site could personalize itself if you gave it a location" with an indication of what location you're giving it or gave it last time.
My experience w/ UI "designers" in certain areas leads me to believe that some groups will treat "alert" as a real modal dialog. - Something I'd like to avoid.

The data fuzzing and logging bits seem OK

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fwiw, i personally would prefer to stick page access to the location under the navigator object.