Representing Location in Location-based Social Awareness Systems

We analyze the results of a survey distributed to heavy users of social networking website on current mobile communications practices regarding location disclosure. We discovered that deception on location disclosure is a common practice amongst this demographic. We also discovered privacy issues of location are reduced in line with cue accuracy. We discuss the social behavior of deception in location sharing, and discover that online social network users are more open to revealing location, but more likely to be deceptive. We demonstrate the user interface of a mobile location-based awareness system that allows the user’s location cue and disclosure accuracy to be set explicitly.