{"id":1125,"date":"2010-06-12T07:16:19","date_gmt":"2010-06-12T15:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=1125"},"modified":"2010-06-12T07:32:19","modified_gmt":"2010-06-12T15:32:19","slug":"why-location-services-have-to-be-done-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/?p=1125","title":{"rendered":"Why location services have to be done right&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.utest.com\" class=\"broken_link\">uTest <\/a>describes itself as the world&#39;s largest marketplace for software testing services. Recently it held a <a href=\"\u201d\" class=\"broken_link\">Bug Battle <\/a>to test the web and mobile applications of the leading \u201ccheck-in\u201d location services. A Bug Battle is a quarterly app testing competition, where &#8220;software professionals from around the world compete to find bugs and rank today&#39;s popular applications&#8221; (previous Bug Battles have focused on browsers, search engines, social networking sites, etc.<\/p>\n<p>When evaluating location-based check-in services, testers were given ten days in May to report the most interesting and severe bugs, and to rank these applications based on<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>geo-location accuracy,<\/li>\n<li>social media integration,<\/li>\n<li>friend connectivity,<\/li>\n<li>status recognition features and<\/li>\n<li>ease-of use<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>uTest offered nearly $4,000 in prize money to those who submitted the best bugs for feedback.<br \/>\nThe results of the battle, which rated <a href=\"\u201d\" class=\"broken_link\">Foursquare<\/a>, <a href=\"\u201d\" class=\"broken_link\">Gowalla<\/a> and <a href=\"\u201d\" class=\"broken_link\">Brightkite<\/a>, are detailed <a href=\"\u201d\" class=\"broken_link\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The report includes comments by people who clearly love the service. For example:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">&#8220;The Gowalla app and web interface themselves are easy on the eyes, and venues get their own snazzy icon depicting what type of establishment it is. I feed my Gowalla check-ins to Facebook, and having an image that catches attention in a cluttered news feed matters. The user can see everyone who has checked in at a particular venue and how many times.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"margin: 10px; float: right;\" src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/2010\/06\/utest2.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"389\" height=\"206\" \/>But one clear outcome is that many testers reported serious bugs related to privacy and security &#8211; a category not present in the original list:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">&#8220;The impact of check-in services on personal privacy and security took on a prominent role in this study. 80% of respondents responded \u201cYes\u201d when asked if they were concerned about how location-based check-in services could impact their personal privacy and safety. Nearly half of respondents (49%) chose \u201cprivacy and security concerns\u201d as the top reason they do not use check-in services more often.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/2010\/06\/utest1.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\u201d\" class=\"broken_link\">VentureBeat<\/a>, which wrote about the report, <a href=\"\u201d\" class=\"broken_link\">concludes<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">In addition to appreciating easy-to-use services and bemoaning the lack of Frappuccino deals, the testers seem to be concerned about the privacy and security implications of check-in services in general. 49% of testers said privacy and security concerns were the top reason they don\u2019t use check-in services more often. This is something the check-in services need to address if they want to avoid privacy flames like the ones Facebook is constantly fighting.<\/p>\n<p>These services can be built so as to respect and enhance privacy.\u00a0 Things like giant world databases linking our devices to our home locations don&#39;t help convince anyone that we are doing that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>49% of testers said privacy and security concerns were the top reason they don\u2019t use check-in services more often<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,3,47,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}