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.