SXSW: Privacy Concerns Grow Over Location-Aware Apps

If you live in the Austin area, you're definitely aware of the yearly festival known as SXSW. SXSW is an annual film, music, and interactive conference and festival held in Austin. Therefore, during this week, the  city fills up with many celebrities and companies that do not want to give away private information, such as their location.

App developers are more concerned than ever about the privacy implications of apps that detect and remember the physical locations of the people using their phones.

Since Apple admitted last summer that the iPhone collects user location data and stores it in an unencrypted file on the phone, red flags started going off in people's heads about what personal information others could get a hold of. This could be a dangerous situation when you consider some of the privacy-infringing things that can be done with your location data. For example, your wireless company detects and stores your location every time your device connects to a network, which is constantly.

SXSW keynote speaker and tech consultant, Amber Case, stated,"As with any new tech people are going to try to use them for all sorts of things, but there are a lot of good things [location-detection technology] can be used for, like finding the locations of people on the ground who might be in danger."

Hopefully privacy won't become a big issue in this year's SXSW festival. Remember to have a good time, be safe, and don't do anything we wouldn't do. (wink wink)