This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by Fred Grott. Original Post: GoogelLatitude, Loopt, and AppLock Feed Title: ShareMe Technologies LLC-The Mobile Future Feed URL: http://www.jroller.com/shareme/feed/entries/rss Feed Description: A Weblog about Java programming and digital convergence on mobile devices in such areas as P2P and collaborative technology. Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by Fred Grott Latest Posts From ShareMe Technologies LLC-The Mobile Future

One of the biggest privacy issues in services such as Loopt , Gogole Latitude and etc has been how to protect privacy in a Mobile device application that gets borrowed as most Mobile OSes do not supor tmutli-user set ups. Google Latitude is now receing the same focus on those concerns as Loopt when they first launched under the the name raidate and even today under theri name of Loopt according to this computerworld article.

My approach to solve such issues has two distinct steps for Xspot. One I assume that the mobiel device will be borrowed among friends and thus set up my database schema to accept multi-users under different user names and password pairs. The second part is I enforce an automatic application lock in that when the Application is started the user is forced to login using a username and password.

I wish Google would sometimes ask outside independent mobile developers about this speicic concern as we have new ideas on how to handle it correctly to inctrease consumer 'sales'. It is one of the reasons I am taking so long to get aspect sof Xspot such as privacy and tc right the first time.

Mobile is not like desktop. It is much easier to protect privacy if you always assume on mobile that  the mobile device will be borrowed among friends and thus have to plan on simulating multi-user functionaities where privacy protection is concerned.

This is the same exact concerns Motorola will face with their Social handset running Android. I know from the renewed interest in this blog by Motorola corporate offices that they have not planned for that set of concerns in their own social applications for their own Social handset running Android.