Sunday, March 18, 2012

Indoor GPS Raises Privacy Concerns

In the world of indoor GPS, Nokia has a Wifi-based High Accuracy Indoor Positioning System. But Windows is determined to best that.

In the world of indoor GPS, Nokia has a Wifi-based High Accuracy Indoor Positioning System already available, with other companies working to best it.

With all budding new technology comes certain concerns about how it will change things, and indoor GPS systems are no exception. As more and more companies are researching and racing to be the first to create an accurate system for location positioning indoors, many companies are starting to look at what can be done with the gold mine of personal location information that will result from widespread adoption of indoor GPS.

GPSworld wrote an excellent article about how retailers and marketing companies are examining the ways knowing exactly where you are in their store can be used to market to consumers. What did you look at versus what did you ultimately purchase? How long were you in the store? Why did you go in the store in the first place? All of these questions could, theoretically, be answered by accessing your indoor GPS location information. But, some are starting to wonder how consumers are going to react to this invasion of privacy.

Technology is going to continue to expand and I have no doubt that as it does, questions of privacy are going to become more and more prevalent. GPS is an awesome tool with a shocking capability to invade your privacy, much like the internet. And, much like the internet, it is something that we’ll all have to get used to eventually.

Personally, while GPS in general is extremely useful on the road and the trail, I think that indoor GPS is rather pointless and I don’t know that I would really feel it was necessary enough to trade my personal information to access it. But then again, that’s just me. What do you think?

 

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