Mobile Geolocation Services, EU

EU’s Article 29 Working Party adopted opinion regarding mobile geolocation services and required e.g. a prior informed consent from users. Yet The European Commission’s proposed reform of the EU’s 1995 data protection rules includes nearly nothing about geolocation.

By: Anne Aaltonen

On May 16, 2011, EU’s Article 29 Working Party (WP29) adopted an opinion setting out privacy compliance guidance for mobile geolocation services.

According to the opinion: “A smart mobile device is very intimately linked to a specific individual. Most people tend to keep their mobile devices very close to themselves, from their pocket or bag to the night table next to their bed. It seldom happens that a person lends such a device to another person. Most people are aware that their mobile device contains a range of highly intimate information, ranging from e-mail to private pictures, from browsing history to for example a contact list. This allows the providers of geolocation based services to gain an intimate overview of habits and patterns of the owner of such a device and build extensive profiles. From a pattern of inactivity at night, the sleeping place can be deduced, and from a regular travel pattern in the morning, the location of an employer may be deduced. The pattern may also include data derived from the movement patterns of friends, based on the so-called social graph. A behavioral pattern may also include special categories of data, if it for example reveals visits to hospitals and religious places, presence at political demonstrations or presence at other specific locations revealing data about for example sex life. These profiles can be used to take decisions that significantly affect the owner.”