When most people are talking about popular location-based applications such as foursquare, yelp, gowalla, and loopt the conversation is more about users, badges, check-in specials/rewards and value and less about privacy. Even though has changed a little with the recent news about both Apple and Google tracking smartphone users. Privacy using location-based applications is still a topic that is not discussed enough.
With that being said here’s some valuable information from the “U.S. Smartphone App Users Concerned with Privacy When it Comes to Location” post via the Nielsen Wire.
According to The Nielsen Company’s latest research on mobile applications, most mobile app downloaders, which Nielsen defines as those mobile subscribers who have downloaded an application in the past 30 days, are concerned about privacy when it comes to sharing their location via mobile phone. This concern is more pronounced among women app downloaders, with 59 percent reporting they have privacy concerns compared to 52 percent of male app downloaders.
Age is a factor as well. Mobile app downloaders between the ages of 25-34 were the least likely to have privacy concerns. Privacy concerns were considerably higher among those over the age of 45.
