The Toronto Star looks at the personal information tradeoff inherent in certain mobile app offerings. An investigation last year found widespread transmission of phones' locations by apps. With some developers beginning to offer location-based coupons, there is fear that consumers will be persuaded to share ever more data. "We're very bad at calculating risk or cost, so we make bad choices about sharing information," says privacy researcher and consultant Ashkan Soltani. "Instant gratification will discount things in the future." Soltani adds that legislation requiring consent for data collection probably won't work. "Without baseline privacy protection and a list of acceptable and unacceptable practices, the consent model may create more bad outcomes," Soltani says.
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