Since early of this year, my colleagues and I have been working on an indoor positioning platform. Currently, it runs as a standalone app in Android phones. On top of our platform, our collaborators can develop and provide location-based services, e.g. navigation, location-based advertisements.
However, recently we were asked the possibility of extend the current standalone version to client-server mode. That is, there will be a server sitting at the Internet and the clients (our app at the smartphones) regularly update the server with their current location. We understand that there are needs to keep the data at the server. One immediate example is user tracking: a company may want to track where the staffs are, a shopping mall may want to profile the customers.
In our opinion, from standalone mode to client-server mode is an easy extension. The difficulty does not lie at the implementation but the privacy issue. Are the users of our app willing to be tracked? We think that it is better to leave this issue to our collaborators to justify. As a result, the best solution is to let the collaborators to extend our platform to client-server mode, while we can continue focusing on improving the accuracy of positioning.
Speaking of tracking, there is suggestion on methods to track mobile users even without them knowing. This can be done by deploying some sniffing devices which sniff wireless signals emitted from users’ phone, and then locate them. A good example is Snoopy. For us, using sniffing devices is an intrusive approach, while our current approach (without sniffing device) is a non-intrusive approach. A good thing (at least for the user’s point of view) of our approach is that users get to choose. If they do not want to be tracked, they can always uninstall our app, or we can provide such option in our app.
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