The Price of Convenience: Privacy and Mobile Commerce

An effective mobile commerce typically requires a “system” that maintains a detailed and dynamically updated profile of the individual user. A remote vehicle monitoring system, for example, requires the vehicle to transmit its position (together with a range of diagnostic information such as speed) in “soft real time”. Integrated with a specific driver’s history, these data may permit the system to infer traffic congestion and reroute other drivers. More often than not, the user of the global positioning system that forms part of the navigation support is only vaguely aware of the fact that he is transmitting his own location-based information, while at the same time receiving aggregate information based on data transmitted by other users. Privacy is being exchanged for convenience. Individual “consumers” of such services must always balance costs (e.g., loss of privacy pertaining to personal location and driving speed) against benefits obtained (e.g., navigational support). We argue that the private information given up in such exchanges constitutes a significant but hidden aspect of the cost of using mobile commerce applications. The issue is examined from technical, behavioural and institutional/regulatory perspectives. A provisional general model of attitude formation and mobile commerce behaviour associated with the issue is developed and illustrated. We also introduce the concept of “price of convenience” as a metaphor to support multidisciplinary analysis of the topic, with emphasis on the manner in which private information becomes potentially public, key behaviours and the implications of such access in normative/ethical terms.