Doctoral Dissertation Research: Geoprivacy Attitudes and Personal Location-Masking Strategies of Internet Users

San Diego State University Foundation, San Diego CA

Investigators

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation research project will examine public attitudes towards geoprivacy and the extent to which Internet users attempt to obscure or mask their personal locations in order to protect privacy when they engage in online activity. The project will provide new knowledge about the strategies individuals employ to prevent their personal identifiability when location is requested, and it will provide new insights into the relationships between privacy attitudes and behavior in responding to location requests. While much work on geoprivacy focuses on strategies for researchers to protect the anonymity of human subjects, this project will emphasize the role individuals play in managing their own location profiles. This project will enhance basic understanding of the factors associated with the propensity to mask location, which will inform future research that assumes self-reported location to be factual by providing a sounder basis for error calculation. Improved knowledge about who is masking their data online and why they are doing so will help application developers better understand how to serve those individuals. Results will be disseminated broadly to a wide range of potential beneficiaries, including non-profit groups that seek to protect digital privacy and governmental organizations like the National Geospatial Advisory Committee. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career. Geoprivacy refers to the right of individuals to control when and how their personal location data are shared. Amid increasingly pervasive locational data collection, attempts by the public to exercise this control largely remain unexplored. This doctoral student conducting this project will examine the ways in which adults mask their location data online as well as how geoprivacy knowledge and attitudes influence this location-masking behavior. She will conduct an online survey of adults in California using a probability sample with a mail contact method to enhance response rate and an open sample with an online solicitation. She will analyze the correlates of both the resolution and factuality of location provided in the survey with logistic regression. Among intervening variables that the student will consider are previous privacy infringement, experience with hacking or identity theft, and data industry experience. She also will test for spatial clusters of higher and lower levels of location-masking activity.