Re: Geofencing and privacy

24.06.2015, 07:37, "Christine Runnegar" <runnegar@isoc.org>:
> Hi all.
>
> The First Public Working Draft of Geofencing API has been published by the Geolocation WG:
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/2015/WD-geofencing-20150604/
>
> You will see that there is still work to be done on the privacy and security considerations section.

I raised an issue [1] on the precision of circles - what happens if a user's geolocation is expressed as [51,0] - a rough location for "London" and a geofence is set up around 50.234567,-.31415927 - say, some GCHQ coffee point…?

A lot of what happens with geoinformation depends on understanding the resolution - are you allowing the system to discover that you are in a given city, on a given street, or whether you are sitting or standing at the tram stop? (Actually the current spec is pretty daft and can't tell if you're in a given street, only if you're within a certain ellipse defined by wgs84)?

What if someone sets up a private geofence for you, say "around your house". Browsers should probably provide a way to independently verify the area that is begin described... but will people use it? Not that many people can actually read a map - hence the popularity of turn-by-turn navigation.

cheers

Chaals

--
Charles McCathie Nevile - web standards - CTO Office, Yandex
chaals@yandex-team.ru - - - Find more at http://yandex.com

Received on Wednesday, 24 June 2015 08:46:59 UTC