Technologies such as GPS, mobile networks and WiFi hotspots can create location-enabled services that bring many benefits to mobile users.
These services can provide important safety benefits. For example, they can help emergency services reach accidents, allow blind people to identify their location and enable families of Alzheimer's sufferers to help them if they become disoriented.
The use of location capabilities also opens up a wide range of other services. These services can contribute to more efficient working by mobile workers, such as taxi drivers or couriers, or simply to a more user-friendly experience for applications and services that depend upon inputting location information, particularly where the user interface is restricted, such as on a mobile phone. But location-enabled services also raise concerns about privacy and consent.
Vodafone's policy on location services
Vodafone classifies location-enabled services into active and passive services. Active location services are those that are initiated directly by the mobile phone user. An example of such a service is: "Where’s my nearest chemist/cash machine/cinema etc?". A response from the location service provider would supply this information to the customer in the form of a map or directions, for example, based on the customer's location. Passive location services enable the location of one user to be tracked by another, once the service has been enabled.
Our policy on location-based services aims to minimise the risk of unauthorised location surveillance, ensuring customers cannot be tracked by another person or application without their prior consent. It includes guidelines on how consent should be obtained, used and managed to ensure clarity, transparency and fairness to the person being located. We periodically review our policy in light of recent market developments, most recently, for example, the increased market penetration of mobile with GPS technology.
Our responsibility
We recognise we have a responsibility to provide data security and privacy protection to mobile users. Our view is that we need to help create a safer environment for location services if they are to be sustainable in the longer term. However, location data incorporated in many new services and applications is no longer controlled by mobile operators. Ensuring application developers design location-based applications and services that respect guidelines on user privacy is a significant challenge, and one that mobile operators cannot address alone.
Despite this reality, mobile operators are still likely to be perceived as accountable if users are harmed or their privacy invaded. Hence, Vodafone seeks to take a strong position to protect its users and will use its influence and commercial leverage with other industry participants to shape how location services develop.
