Mobile Locator Privacy Control via Encounter Horizon Detection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing mobile buddy mapping applications do not provide users with real-time awareness of their visibility to others, making it difficult to manage privacy settings, especially when dealing with multiple buddy lists and potential visibility across various devices and locations.
Innovation Solution
A system comprising a mobile device, an application listener, and a server with an encounter manager, approach manager, and notification marshalling system that tracks buddies' map interactions, providing users with notifications and visibility options such as appearing, not appearing, or appearing anonymously, based on impending detection by their buddies.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If users manually change visibility settings for each buddy, then privacy control is achieved, but time consumption and operational complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-calculates and notifies users of impending visibility events before they occur. The encounter horizon calculation determines in advance when a buddy will enter the user's visibility range, allowing users to prepare and adjust settings proactively rather than reactively, thus reducing time consumption while maintaining privacy control
Solution Approach 2:
The system provides real-time feedback to users about their visibility status and impending visibility events. Through notifications and status updates, users receive continuous information about which buddies can see their location and when visibility will change, enabling informed privacy management decisions without manual monitoring
2Reliability
If users manually change visibility settings for each buddy, then privacy control is achieved, but operational complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system automatically calculates encounter horizons, determines visibility events, and sends notifications without requiring user intervention. The automated visibility management reduces operational complexity by handling the computationally intensive tasks of tracking multiple buddies' locations, calculating horizons, and determining visibility events, while users simply receive and respond to notifications
Solution Approach 2:
The system introduces an intermediary automated visibility management layer between the user and the complex buddy tracking system. This intermediary handles the complexity of multi-buddy visibility calculations and coordinate system transformations, presenting simplified notification-based interactions to users while maintaining precise privacy control
3Loss of information
If the system tracks multiple buddies' locations and map interactions, then visibility awareness is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments the complexity by separating the automated visibility management functionality from the user interface. The backend automatically performs encounter horizon calculations and visibility determinations for multiple buddies, while the user interface simply presents notifications. This segmentation allows comprehensive tracking of multiple buddies without proportionally increasing user-facing system complexity
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements a universal automated visibility management mechanism that handles multiple buddies simultaneously through a single unified process. The encounter horizon calculation and visibility determination logic works universally across all tracked buddies, eliminating the need for separate manual configuration for each buddy and reducing overall system complexity despite tracking multiple users
Data Source
AI summary
A method and system for managing awareness information relating to a mobile device's visibility with respect to other buddy devices, the system comprising; the mobile device, a mobile application listing one or more buddies, an application listener which tracks the one or more buddies zoom operations and radar zoom factors, and a server, the server comprising an encounter manager, an approach manager and a notification marshalling system.