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This is a wonderful idea, especially since the area covered by cell phones vastly surpasses that of weather stations. Unfortunately, there's a very real privacy

by law 15y ago

This is a wonderful idea, especially since the area covered by cell phones vastly surpasses that of weather stations. Unfortunately, there's a very real privacy concern of which you must remain cognizant: storing a time series of the paired barometer reading and GPS coordinates. This information is personally identifiable, even if the device ID is just a unique string of numbers. I'm not sure how you're storing the data, but I would suggest to store only the GPS coordinates and barometer reading, normalizing both to have the same approximation error.

cryptoz 15y ago
> Unfortunately, there's a very real privacy concern of which you must remain cognizant: storing a time series of the paired barometer reading and GPS coordinates. This information is personally identifiable, even if the device ID is just a unique string of numbers. Yes, this has been a complication from the start. Here's our current policy/methods: We delete all data after 1 month and we let users remove all of their submitted data completely. We never show anyone's actual location on the map (coordinates are fudged by a few hundred meters). I do want to store some data longer than 1 month in the future as will be helpful to use for data mining, looking for patterns, etc. But first I will have to find a way to carefully anonymize it.
- law 15y ago
  I'd surprisingly prefer storing all data indefinitely and not allowing users to delete what they submitted if and only if you also eliminate any way to group locations by a device. This data is just too dangerous, even in spite of innocuous intentions. Data breaches happen, National Security Letters remain threats, and targeting ads based on a user's current location will tempt anyone. You will fill your users with confidence if you remove your ability to group the data points. Moreover, you shouldn't discount the importance of historical barometric data. At some point, it might no longer be practical to store the data in its most atomic state, but maybe rolled up to a periodic snapshot (maybe hourly) of some geographic region. What data would you be looking to store for longer than a month?

by law 15y ago

cryptoz 15y ago

> Unfortunately, there's a very real privacy concern of which you must remain cognizant: storing a time series of the paired barometer reading and GPS coordinates. This information is personally identifiable, even if the device ID is just a unique string of numbers. Yes, this has been a complication from the start. Here's our current policy/methods: We delete all data after 1 month and we let users remove all of their submitted data completely. We never show anyone's actual location on the map (coordinates are fudged by a few hundred meters). I do want to store some data longer than 1 month in the future as will be helpful to use for data mining, looking for patterns, etc. But first I will have to find a way to carefully anonymize it.

law 15y ago
I'd surprisingly prefer storing all data indefinitely and not allowing users to delete what they submitted if and only if you also eliminate any way to group locations by a device. This data is just too dangerous, even in spite of innocuous intentions. Data breaches happen, National Security Letters remain threats, and targeting ads based on a user's current location will tempt anyone. You will fill your users with confidence if you remove your ability to group the data points. Moreover, you shouldn't discount the importance of historical barometric data. At some point, it might no longer be practical to store the data in its most atomic state, but maybe rolled up to a periodic snapshot (maybe hourly) of some geographic region. What data would you be looking to store for longer than a month?