[Re-sending with fixed formatting. Apologies for the earlier readability issues!]

Dear Program Committee,

I’m Aleksandra Korolova, a WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor of Computer Science at University of Southern California. My research aims to develop and deploy algorithms and technologies that enable data-driven innovations while preserving privacy. As part of that goal, I work on identifying vulnerabilities and weaknesses in currently deployed systems, including weaknesses where the permissions are not transparent (http://bit.ly/APPLEDP) or do not match the stated ones (https://journalprivacyconfidentiality.org/index.php/jpc/article/view/594/577 and http://bit.ly/FBadprivacy).

I’d like to lead a discussion on the topic of location privacy and related permissions. In particular:

I’d like to highlight the recent findings that disabling Location History on Google (https://apnews.com/ef95c6a91eeb4d8e9dda9cad887bf211) and Facebook (forthcoming) does not stop the companies from recording and subsequently using location, something that may be quite surprising to the users.
Combined with powerful ad targeting capabilities, location tracking may be used to target vulnerable groups (such as abortion clinic visitors, Muslims in the US, etc.) through advertising campaigns (http://bit.ly/FBadprivacy.)
I’d like to discuss methods app developers use to bypass the lack of location permission and infer a user’s location, and changes that Apple and Google may consider implementing in iOS and Android to make that more difficult.
I’d like to propose a more fine-grained permission than “Never”, “While Using the App” and “Always” that is currently available, that is more aligned with both the uses of location of today’s apps and users’ conceptual understanding of location.

Given how much about an individual’s background, interests, and life can be learned simply from the knowledge of their location, I believe that effective, usable, and meaningful location privacy permissions is an important topic to be discussed. By highlighting the current issues with location-related permissions, I hope to facilitate a productive and meaningful discussion of the topic.

Thank you for your consideration,
Aleksandra Korolova
WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor of Computer Science
University of Southern California
korolova.com

On Fri, Aug 17, 2018 at 9:01 PM, Aleksandra Korolova <korolova@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:

Dear Program Committee,

I’m Aleksandra Korolova, a WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor of Computer Science at University of Southern California. My research aims to develop and deploy algorithms and technologies that enable data-driven innovations while preserving privacy. As part of that goal, I work on identifying vulnerabilities and weaknesses in currently deployed systems, including weaknesses where the permissions are not transparent (http://bit.ly/APPLEDP) or do not match the stated ones (https://journalprivacyconfidentiality.org/index.php/jpc/article/view/594/577 and http://bit.ly/FBadprivacy).

I’d like to lead a discussion on the topic of location privacy and related permissions. In particular:
I’d like to highlight the recent findings that disabling Location History on Google (https://apnews.com/ef95c6a91eeb4d8e9dda9cad887bf211) and Facebook (forthcoming) does not stop the companies from recording and subsequently using location, something that may be quite surprising to the users.
Combined with powerful ad targeting capabilities, location tracking may be used to target vulnerable groups (such as abortion clinic visitors, Muslims in the US, etc.) through advertising campaigns (http://bit.ly/FBadprivacy.)
I’d like to discuss methods app developers use to bypass the lack of location permission and infer a user’s location, and changes that Apple and Google may consider implementing in iOS and Android to make that more difficult.
I’d like to propose a more fine-grained permission than “Never”, “While Using the App” and “Always” that is currently available, that is more aligned with both the uses of location of today’s apps and users’ conceptual understanding of location.

Given how much about an individual’s background, interests, and life can be learned simply from the knowledge of their location, I believe that effective, usable, and meaningful location privacy permissions is an important topic to be discussed. By highlighting the current issues with location-related permissions, I hope to facilitate a productive and meaningful discussion of the topic.

Thank you for your consideration,

Aleksandra Korolova

WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor of Computer Science

University of Southern California

korolova.com