Claudia Capilla
Closing Case Study 2, pg. 29

1) I currently have 45 location based applications on my smart phone and use 21 applications with that feature. Majority of the applications are travel and entertainment related. I use Google Maps, Yelp, Camera and Siri on a daily basis. I find myself using these applications more throughout the day, on my way to work, when deciding what or where to eat and also when out with friends. The most recent applications that I started using more frequently now are Around Me and Breathometer. Around Me is an application that quickly finds nearby Point Of Interests such as restaurants, hotels, theaters, hospitals and much more. I like using this application when I go to areas that I am not familiar with and need to find a place to eat or stop. Breathometer is a device that lets users measure their blood alcohol content using their iOS and Android smartphones. It plugs into your phone’s audio jack and turns your smartphone into a portable breathalyzer. It obtains your current blood alcohol level by simply blowing into the device, it then learns how long before you are “back to zero,” and also allows you to call a local cab directly from the app. This app gives you the power to make smarter decisions when drinking and being responsible.

2) I know that Privacy Policies are put in place to protect the consumer, but are they really? I attempted to read the terms for a recent application a few weeks ago and about half way through the terms, I stopped reading. The amount of words and language they use causes any reader to lose interest half way and just accept the terms and think, “ohh what could possibly happen? What are they really going to do with my information?” I too used to be a thinker in that bandwagon and recently started to notice the

Critics also question if consumers even read privacy policies or can understand what they read. A 2001 study by the Privacy Leadership Initiative claimed only 3% of consumers read privacy policies carefully, and 64% briefly glanced at, or never read, privacy policies.[39] The average web site user once having read a privacy statement may have more uncertainty about the trustworthiness of the web site than before.[40] One possible issue is length and complexity of policies. According to a 2008 Carnegie Mellon study the average length of a privacy policy is 2,500 words and requires an average 10 minutes to read. The study cited that "Privacy policies are hard to read" and, as a result, "read infrequently".[41]

"Preliminary work from a small pilot study in our laboratory revealed that some Internet users believe their only serious risk online is they may lose up to $50 if their credit card information is stolen. For people who think that is their primary risk, our point estimates show the value of their time to read policies far exceeds this risk. Even for our lower bound estimates of the value of time, it is not worth reading privacy policies though it may be worth skimming them," said the research.
"This leads to two implications. First, Internet users likely do not understand the risks to their privacy … second, if the privacy community can find ways to reduce the time cost of reading policies, it may be easier to convince Internet users to do so. For example, if we can help people move from needing to read policies word-for-word and only skim policies by providing useful headings, or if we can offer ways to hide all but relevant information and thus reduce the effective length of the policies, more people may be willing to read them," it said.

"Some corporations take the view that their users should read privacy policies and if they fail to do so, it is evidence of lack of concern about privacy," they said. "Instead, we counter that websites need to do a better job of conveying their practices in useable ways, which includes reducing the time it takes to read policies. If corporations cannot do so, regulation may be necessary to provide basic privacy protections."

“Consumers fundamentally misunderstand the rules of the marketplace,” said Chris Hoofnagle, senior staff attorney at the Samuelson Clinic at UC-Berkley’s Boalt School of Law, addressing a perceived apathy toward the subject. He cites studies in which up to 75% of consumers think as long as a site has a privacy policy it means it won’t share data with third parties. “They equate the presence of the policy with substantive privacy rules.”

http://privacypolicyexamples.com/bonus%20content/why-operators-will-never-actually-eliminate-liability-despite-their-best-efforts/privacy-policies-are-in-place-to-protect-operators-not-users/

3) My car’s GPS system is not as reliable as I used to think it was. The constant rerouting and lack of search results is really frustrating. I can’t tell you how many times I would put in a friends address or restaurant location and would have the system tell me unavailable or “address not recognizable. With a few keystrokes in my smart phone app and boom, there is the address in less time that it took me to enter it on my GPS. I also get constant junk mail about updating my GPS’s geography CD.
When I looked up the cost to update my software, it was in the upwards of $225. Prior to my recent vehicle GPS systems, I was a fan of paper maps. My father, retired Navy pilot, had always made it a habit to teach us to use a map when navigating to an area we weren’t familiar with and to also review a map prior to driving to your destination. Every now and then, I test the phones technology against a paper map to see if my route is really the length it says it is. I’ve had encounters where I listened to my Google maps app and had it take me down a dead end or a street that wasn’t finished or even developed!! Word of advice, don’t always rely 100% on technology.

4) I feel that in this day and age and with the rapid growth of technology, that parents should have an idea of what/where their children are via their phones. Don’t get me wrong, watching their every step and move is a little bit obsessive but I also do not blame parents for wanting to know their child’s every move. With missing children featured regularly and prominently in the media, every time a youngster steps unaccompanied out onto the street, it can drive a mom or dad to despair.

n organizations where employees may be at risk, for example, those employing social workers, mobile devices with tracking services (and potentially push-button alarms) are increasingly being handed out to safeguard staff from harm.
Additionally, people who are elderly or infirm can benefit from having a personal locator service so they can be tracked by relatives or care providers. In these situations the person being tracked rarely questions the value of the service.
The same cannot always be said of family locator services, however, particularly when there are children concerned, and they are old enough to expect a certain amount of privacy and independence.
While 63 percent of smartphone-owning parents have children who don’t have smartphones, of those who do, the children are generally the older ones in the family. When we asked parents about their security concerns associated with their children’s phones, we got some surprising answers. Parents who are most aware of security issues tend to be those who don’t buy smartphones for their children. Parents whose kids do have smartphones tend to be less concerned, and don’t seem to know all that much about securing them.
Parental controls on smartphones are a welcome option for some parents but, surprisingly, many parents simply don’t bother with this type of parental management. While a strong majority of parents who let their kids have phones are well aware of the benefits of parental control features — 71 percent to be exact — a whopping 60 percent of them have never used them. Further, of the seventeen different kinds of parental control features available on a child’s phone, the one parents are most interested in using is the one that blocks kids from uninstalling parental controls.

Older children who want a smartphone should be willing to allocate a portion of their allowance toward the bill.

"One of the key factors in deciding when a child should have a phone is where they live and what their typical day entails," "For example, kids who live in large cities and use public transportation would need access to a smartphone at a younger age than those who live in the suburbs and rely upon family members for transportation."