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Location privacy is a growing challenge in today's geo-referenced world. This exploratory study investigates the management of location privacy and mitigation of its violations through case studies of six city and county governments in the United States. It focuses on why or why not local governments have instituted location privacy policies, how they incorporate location privacy in their management, and how the managerial processes of location privacy policy formulation and implementation could be conceptualized. It follows an inductive approach, analyzing within-case findings, identifying cross-case commonalities, and inducing propositions. Findings show that there is no consistent definition of location privacy, with each local government developing its own definition and attendant approaches to privacy policymaking, management, and protection. It induces seven propositions and posits a research model centered on the concept of managerial cognition. Practical implications for city and county management are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While prior studies have provided us with an initial understanding of people's location-sharing privacy preferences, they have been limited to Western countries and have not investigated the impact of the granularity of location disclosures on people's privacy preferences. We report findings of a 3-week comparative study collecting location traces and location-sharing preferences from two comparable groups in the United States and China. Results of the study shed further light on the complexity of people's location-sharing privacy preferences and key attributes influencing willingness to disclose locations to others and to advertisers. While our findings reveal many similarities between US and Chinese participants, they also show interesting differences, such as differences in willingness to share location at 'home' and at 'work' and differences in the granularity of disclosures people feel comfortable with. We conclude with a discussion of implications for the design of location-sharing applications and location-based advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, legal steps have been taken to protect personal privacy, which is viewed as an individual's fundamental right. Location privacy (i.e., protection of personal and location information), however, has not received equal attention in the legal system. Given the recent popularity of location-based services (e.g., cell phones), it is possible to obtain an individual's location information easily and precisely. An investigation of public perception of privacy in the United States indicated that survey responders (1) were unaware of legal implications of location privacy violation and (2) believed that there should be location privacy protection similar to that provided by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]