Mobile device with user controls and policy agent to control application access to device location data

摘要

A mobile device has a service monitor agent that monitors device location from GPS or other location data. A user interface contains privacy user controls to allow users to specify, for each of multiple applications, a location monitoring policy setting applicable specifically to that application. A policy control agent stores the settings and manages access by the respective applications to device location data from the service monitor agent on a per-application basis, based at least in part on the settings. An application interface agent can provide control over the access to the location data by the applications. The user controls and policy control agent may further manage access by specific applications to Internet data service over a WWAN modem.

主权项

1. A wireless end-user device, comprising:
a service monitor agent having a capability to monitor device location and generate device location data; a user interface to display device privacy user controls and accept user input, including controls and input to allow a device user to specify, for each of multiple applications on the device, whether or not that application is authorized by the device user to monitor device location; a policy control agent to store the user input with a plurality of user-specifiable location monitoring policy settings associated respectively with corresponding different applications of the multiple applications; and an application interface agent to apply application level access controls individually to executing instances of the multiple applications, the application level access controls including one or more controls to restrict or allow access by an executing instance of any selected one of the multiple applications to the device location data, based at least in part on a respective one of the location monitoring policy settings stored by the policy control agent and associated with the selected one of the multiple applications.