From “I have nothing to hide” to “Its stalking”: Americans’ comfort sharing individual mobility features

Smartphone applications routinely collect precise location data from users by offering free services and this information is often monetized for advertising and marketing purposes. While many companies limit sales to aggregate behaviors, data aggregators and data brokers (DA&DB) provide access to individual-level location data. Some DA&DB have implemented privacy-preserving rules and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has also intensified its regulations on location-data practices. This paper presents an in-depth exploration of U.S. privacy perceptions regarding specific location features that can be derived from data made available by DA&DB. These findings can provide policy-relevant insights that could assist organizations such as the FTC in defining clearer access rules. Using a factorial vignette survey, we collected responses from 1,405 participants to assess comfort levels with sharing various types of location features, including individual trajectories and visits to points of interest, which are currently available for purchase from DA&DB worldwide. Our results show that trajectory-related features elicit higher privacy concerns, that certain data broker based obfuscation practices increase comfort, and that race, ethnicity and education have an effect on data sharing privacy perceptions.