Joint Workshop on Mobile Web Privacy
WAP Forum & World Wide Web Consortium

7-8 December 2000
Munich, Germany

Motorola Position Paper

Garland Phillips (Garland.Phillips@motorola.com)

& Bill Macko (Bill.Macko@motorola.com)

Introduction

Motorola wants to enable personal services on wireless devices while protecting the privacy of the user.

Example services include:

• location based information services (both Push and Pull services)
• commerce
• web browsing

The privacy mechanism chosen should be bandwidth efficient and not require the exchange of a lot of messages to accomplish. Wireless bandwidth tends to be expensive and multiple messages raise the latency thus negatively affecting the user experience.

Expectations for Workshop

We would like to raise the awareness of mobile device issues and explore possible solutions to mobile privacy.

Perspectives on the Privacy Challenges Raised by Mobile Web
Services

A privacy mechanism for wireless devices should consider that wireless devices typically have the following properties:

• limited CPU capability
• limited storage space
• limited connection throughput
• higher roundtrip latency
• users may roam between wireless carriers

These properties will constrain the solution space.

Suggestions

• Ideally, the owner of the wireless device should be given complete control of his/her personal information. Note that the owner is not always the possessor (e.g., a parent may be the owner of a device which a child carries around). Consider location for example, the owner of a wireless device should be allowed to control the disclosure of the device’s location. He/she should also be able to control the granularity of his/her position that is provided to outside parties.
• A wireless carrier may have access to private information (for example, knowledge of the location or MSISDN of a wireless device). The owner should be in control of when and how that information is disclosed.
• The privacy mechanism should require minimal storage or CPU power from the wireless device.
• The privacy mechanism should consume little communication bandwidth.
• The privacy mechanism should not require a lot of mesasaging.