Study of compliance of Apple´s location based APIs with recommendations of the IETF Geopriv

Location Based Services (LBS) are services offered by smart phone applications which use device location data to offer the location-related services. Privacy of location information is a major concern in LBS applications. This paper compares the location APIs of iOS with the IETF Geopriv architecture to determine what mechanisms are in place to protect location privacy of an iOS user. The focus of the study is on the distribution phase of the Geopriv architecture and its applicability in enhancing location privacy on iOS mobile platforms. The presented review shows that two iOS APIs features known as Geocoder and turning off location services provide to some extent location privacy for iOS users. However, only a limited number of functionalities can be considered as compliant with Geopriv´s recommendations. The paper also presents possible ways how to address limited location privacy offered by iOS mobile devices based on Geopriv recommendations.