Study of compliance of Android location APIs with Geopriv

Abstract

This paper carefully examines the location APIs of Android OS as well as the Geopriv standard architecture to study measures that are being taken by Android OS to protect the location privacy of a user. Android offers various location APIs in its architecture for the app developers to work on location based services (LBS). The results of this evaluation will be compared with Geopriv standard architecture and its ways to enhance location information privacy on mobile platforms. The review of functionality of location APIs shows that Android has limited features such as Geofencing to have some extent of location privacy for a typical user. Only few of the recommendation in distribution segment of Geopriv with slightly different approach are similar to the protection mechanisms offered by location APIs in Android. The paper proposes general steps that can be taken to address location privacy issues on mobile devices.