Subject: [NEXTEL-1] GPS-based Games Raise Privacy Concerns

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 02 Sep 2003 01:26:15 -0400

GPS-based Games Raise Privacy Concerns

Scavenger-hunt style games may be the perfect vehicle for games tied to a player's
location, but the execution of such entertainment raises questions about privacy
and opting in or out.

BY BRAD SMITH
SEPTEMBER 1, 2003

In Sweden, thousands of wireless game subscribers stalk each other using cell
phones and location technology. In Japan, you can use a GPS-enabled cell phone to
arrange a date, an application sometimes used by teenage prostitutes.  In many
countries around the world, a GPS-based game called "geocaching" is growing in
popularity.

As precise location capabilities become part of wireless networks, these kinds of
applications conceivably can pinpoint a subscriber's location. How that
information will be used has raised some privacy advocate eyebrows. Will the users
of these location-based games know what they're getting into?

There are those in the industry who fear wireless game developers could write
multiplayer games that would give out user locations to others, creating the
possibility of stalking. Analysts and game distributors, however, say that is
unlikely given the carriers' privacy protection concerns and responsibilities.

IT'S ALIVE Still, location-based games that do just that have been around for more
than a year. An example is the "Botfighters" game developed by the Swedish company
It's Alive, which uses the Telia network location capabilities to let users track
other users and then virtually shoot them an SMS message. The game has thousands
of users in Sweden and has expanded into other European countries, including
Finland, Ireland and Russia.

Telia's network provides only cell site location, which doesn't pinpoint where a
Botfighters user is located. But technology used for E911 in the United States is
capable of 100-foot or closer location identification.

Sven Haling, CEO of It's Alive, has said in published reports that the company
warns Botfighters users not to give out their names and says subscribers can block
other users who abuse the game. The company also maintains a complaint line about
improper play. It's Alive is eyeing the U.S. market for Botfighters.

Mike Yuen, director of developer relations for Qualcomm's BREW platform, says he's
heard that developers would like to build a GPS-enabled game for cell phones in
the United States but that the operators and OEMs have not yet enabled the
capability. "I think all the companies are thinking about it," he says, adding
that scavenger-hunt style games that use both GPS and wireless "could be a
genre-defining breakthrough."

An example might be an "Amazing Race" kind of game, designed after the TV show but
built for the masses. Geocaching offers that kind of experience, where individuals
with a GPS device find hidden items stashed in locations in a city or rural areas
around the world. Geocaching has become a hot game at the geek level, with tens of
thousands of sites. For now it uses only GPS devices, but one can imagine how
teams could play if they had wireless phones with GPS.

REASON FOR CONCERN In the United States, carriers are more concerned about games
that pinpoint users' locations.
Location-based wireless games would "open a lot of opportunity for game
designers," says Billy Pidgeon, a senior analyst with the Zelos Group. But he
thinks the public would have to be well informed by carriers about the privacy
issues.
Tom Ellsworth, executive vice president of the gaming distributor Jamdat Mobile,
says GPS-enabled cell phones in the United States give the user the ability to
turn off the location features. If a subscriber did that, no application would
find the user's location, although an E911 distress call would override the off
switch.

Still, not all cell phone owners may know how to turn location off or on. "Jamdat
is very, very concerned about people's privacy," Ellsworth says. "In our
'Bejeweled' (multiplayer) game, you don't know where the other players are."
But Ellsworth believes carriers are even more concerned about privacy, given the
legal ramifications. He envisions the possibility of a game application needing to
know where a user was located so it could download the appropriate information for
something like a scavenger hunt, but the carrier would make sure that location was
not sent to others.

Pidgeon says one concern he has is if a wireless game offers a prize, users would
be more apt to let their locations be known. "Where there is a prize involved,
people tend to throw their privacy away," he says.

Mark Frieser, CEO of the analyst firm Consect, says Japanese carriers have now
mandated that location capabilities on handsets are turned off by default, which
isn't the case in the United States. If someone tries to use a location game in
Japan, they are asked if they want to turn the feature on.

"At the end of the day," Frieser says, "the onus is on the user whether they allow
themselves to be tracked 24 hours a day. The user should be intelligent enough to
only give out their location to someone they trust."

http://www.wirelessweek.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA319406&spacedesc=Departments&stt=000

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