EU data protection ruling to impact location-based mobile services
On Wednesday 18 May the EU data protection advisory ruled that location information collected by devices will now be classed as personal data.
The implications of this ruling means strict limits will be imposed on companies collecting and storing location data. This will predominantly affect smartphone companies, telecoms operators and businesses that would like to run location-related services on phones.
Furthermore the ruling is a move towards a law for mobile phone location data that will aim to protect the information about phone users’ movements. In addition, this law could also be added to Europe’s revised Data Protection Directive later this year.
Julian Reiter, MD at Group Positive, says that pushing irrelevant sales messages out to consumers based on geo-location should not happen under any circumstance.
“Just because I walk into a shopping centre or an historic castle for example, doesn’t mean that I want sales messages sent to me from third parties,” he said. “I would dislike this just as much as the idea of a sales person bombarding me in a shop, trying to sell me something I don’t want or need.”
“I have no problem in the idea that if I do a search on my smart phone, the search engine links the idea of where I am into their algorithm to try and return the most relevant answer to my question. Marketers need to make sure they understand the exact needs of consumers before partaking in this kind of activity that could potentially deter engagement.”