The Next Big Thing in 2014: Shifting your GPS location on a smart-phone for the sake of your mobile location Privacy and Security
Wednesday January 8th, 2014 – New York, New York; London, England; Ottawa, Canada;
SinglesAroundMe®, the widely popular social discovery mobile dating app revealed today it’s revolutionary patent pending Position-Shift™ invention which allows people to shift their public geolocation for the sake of their mobile privacy and security while on a smart-phone or social network. It allows mobile users to choose who knows where they are and when, giving them full control of their desired privacy.
Position-Shift™ is set to change mobile location security and privacy for everyone including users of social networks like Facebook®, Google+®, and LinkedIn® as well as smartphone platforms such as Google’s Android®, Apple’s iPhone®, Windows Mobile® and the Blackberry®. People will have the ability to control their location in relation to others as a macro setting on a digital device or specifically within applications.
Social networks like Facebook® could use Position-Shift™ in the future to allow users to choose which friends and family members they would allow to see their exact location. Others could see their location displaced by selectable setting of 1 mile, 2 miles, 10 miles, etc. from their real location on maps or by digital distance calculations. Users can customize levels of location privacy for different individuals, groups of friends, work colleagues, social networks, family, etc.
With the location tracking capabilities inherent within today’s smart-phones, individual privacy and security has become a growing concern for lawmakers and individuals. More and more, smartphone users want the benefits of geolocation services but are reluctant to reveal their exact location.
The Position-Shift™ algorithm introduces a degree of displacement in the user's location with user-defined control. Covert intelligent algorithms control the introduction / removal of the displacement as well as managing metadata posted by the user. Position-Shift™ allows the user to control the information they provide about their location to others but without interfering with their ability to exploit geolocation applications in their real location or with emergency service identification of their location.
Company CEO Christopher Klotz noted, “We came to realize that our invention has broad appeal across all social networks and where location is a privacy issue for people in their everyday lives. People in all walks of life desire the ability to control who knows where they are and we just discovered a clever way to control this in the digital world.”
The SinglesAroundMe® applications use Position-Shift™ to offer users a privacy option choice that displaces users' true location by a few miles. This degree of privacy still allows users to flirt within the general vicinity, but provides them with the comfort and security they desire. User can choose to show, hide and now Shift™ their location within the app.
Similarly, posting a photo to a social network or a photo service like Instagram® and having the option to utilize Position-Shift™ to alter the location of where the photo is taken is an important privacy option. For example users may wish to post a picture, but would prefer to alter the geo-tag location of exactly where the photo is taken from so third parties can’t locate their real location at that point in time, just as they have offset their GPS location.
About SinglesAroundMe:
Launched in 2010, SinglesAroundMe has been pioneering location based mobile dating and is a leading social discovery mobile app on the Android, iPhone & Blackberry with over 2 million users in 100 countries.
Formal United States Patent Application Serial No. 14/089,162 filed November 25th 2013 titled Methods and Systems Related To privacy In Location Based Mobile Applications; International PCT Patent Application Serial No. PCT/CA2013/000973. Both of these applications claim priority to earlier filed US Provisional Applications Nos. 61/725,645 filed January 15, 2013 and No. 61/836,227 filed June 18, 2013; plus other 2010-2012
Release also available at NASDAQ Global News Wire