Privacy-friendly User Location Tracking with Smart Devices: The BeaT Prototype

Customers use smart devices to share their location data with service providers to co-create personalized, location-based services. However, mobile apps that record movement profiles not only yield value-added service but also bear potential for abuse. Especially apps utilizing GPS-based tracking pose a privacy risk because they could–once enabled–unnoticeably record data in private situations. In response, we developed a privacy-friendly solution, called BeaT, that tracks user locations without GPS and gives users full control over the time and scope of data collection. We leverage Bluetooth Beacon technology to confine the perimeter in which tracking takes place. This paper presents the requirements, algorithmic design, prototypical implementation, real-world use case, and evaluation setting for BeaT