RE: Issue-39: Tracking of Geographic Data

Jeff,

Let me dive a bit deeper in my thinking and why I felt this should go to the Privacy Interest Group (unfortunate acronym ☺ ).


1.       I appreciate the desire for DNT to halt all activities seen to be privacy sensitive but I believe this is a slippery slope and that this working group was created to address the issues of cross-site tracking specifically.  Within the Privacy Interest Group, I would recommend we look at layering user options in this regard and that DNT and Geo-location should be managed separately (separate permissions).

2.       Geo-location can primarily be collected in 4 ways:

a.       Registration:  User provides the information directly to the party as part of a registration process

b.      Device Provided:  User activates geo-location features through a consent driven process (many examples of this for mobile devices)

c.       Inferred:  Based on generally the IP Address, a map is created to devise the geo-location of the user/agent (quality/confidence erodes as granularity increases)

d.      Passed:  One party, through one of the mechanisms above, passes this information to another party

I could see a place where we equate the DNT signal to halt passage of geo-location data to a 3rd party <example 2(d)> but this again feels like slippery slope.  Where would this be bounded?  What information would still be allowed to be passed for legitimate business purposes?

Again, I would suggest geo-location as a topic be managed by the Privacy Interest Group.

- Shane

From: Jeffrey Chester [mailto:jeff@democraticmedia.org]
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2011 4:45 AM
To: Shane Wiley
Cc: public-tracking@w3.org
Subject: Re: Issue-39: Tracking of Geographic Data

We should discuss the role of geo--data in the tracking process, since the use of geo-location is part of the tracking system. I believe it should be in the scope of this group.  Happy to be involved in this discussion, as we are working on the "path to purchase" tracking system.

Jeff Chester
Center for Digital Democracy
Washington DC
www.democraticmedia.org<http://www.democraticmedia.org>
Jeff@democraticmedia.org<mailto:Jeff@democraticmedia.org>

On Dec 14, 2011, at 12:36 AM, Shane Wiley <wileys@yahoo-inc.com<mailto:wileys@yahoo-inc.com>> wrote:
Issue-39, Tracking of geographic data (however it's determined, or used)
Draft: Shane Wiley
Edit: David Singer
We have talked about this as a group a few times, and it seems as though consensus is likely to fall somewhere between it's ok to identify country of origin and it's not ok to go to zip-plus-four level. The final details, and how we express that in an international context, has not been put into text.


Proposal:  I believe discussion of geographic information is outside the scope of the working group if it is generally agreed our core focus is on data collection and use across non-affiliated or non-commonly branded web sites.

Geographic location data collection and use is a significant privacy topic – especially with the emergence of GPS enabled mobile devices resulting in precise geographic location – and would recommend this topic be picked up by the Privacy Interest Group (http://www.w3.org/2011/07/privacy-ig-charter.html).