I have spoken about privacy in the past. With everything that has come out in the last few weeks it is understandable that people are concerned. People are very receptive to applications that utilize cell location. Many people use their phones for navigation everyday. They use it to find the closest restaurant or auto repair business. Nobody really thinks about what is going on in the background or how that information is collected or stored. Unless of course they feel like their privacy is being invaded.
The geospatial industry is going to have to start regulating the storage of location data. That is inevitable. What I think is interesting is that users can easily regulate the amount of location data being recorded from their phone. I know that it should not always be the users responsibility, but when it comes to technology it really seems like people lose the common sense that they have in the real world. People never announced their location to random people before, but with social media we do it all the time. You can turn a lot of things off on your phone. Or just turn the phone off entirely. It is up to the geospatial industry to educate the public about how their location information is stored and how the user can affect the situation. When that is combined with a reasonable archive duration from the mobile providers I think that concern over privacy will reduce