Smartphone Users Surprised to Discover Websites Can View Their Every Move

SAN FRANCISCO, March 25, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Mobile device users that try this web based demo clearly see a live view of how their location is being tracked right now. "Most people are aware their smart devices can track them, but they have no idea how accurate this is or how they could start to visualize this," said Rob Manson, CEO & Co-founder of buildAR.com, the company that developed this demo.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140325/PH89622

To test this for yourself just open http://buildAR.com/trackme on your mobile device. It shows you an interactive map that displays exactly where your device thinks you are and how accurate this is estimated to be.

"This opens people's eyes to the privacy implications of the modern web," said Manson. "But try it for yourself and you'll see how inaccurate this can be. It makes you think about applications that rely on this location data."

buildAR has put together a blog post that walks thru how this can impact different types of applications, including Augmented Reality apps that use location to show you information overlaid on the world around you. "Many AR apps quickly grab the first location estimate the phone provides to load some data as quickly as possible," said Manson. "This often means the wrong data can be loaded and as soon as it's displayed it then moves around as the phone makes more accurate calculations. This creates a very confusing user experience."

This demo is part of the awareness building that buildAR is working on thru their new "Augmenting the Web" Kickstarter project. The project makes it possible to deliver AR using standard Web browsers, making AR available to Billions of devices including smartphones, tablets and wearables like Google Glass. You can check out this project at http://kck.st/1gnUJex

Location data has already had a massive impact on all our lives and has become something we depend on every day, yet it is still an area that needs a lot more research, especially from a user focused perspective. "By helping people see what's really going on under the hood we're hoping we can all learn more about how to create great web based experiences that rely on locations," said Alex Young, CXO & Co-founder of buildAR.

About buildAR.com

Think of buildAR.com as "Wordpress for the Real World." It makes creating Augmented Reality as "easy as adding a blog post" or "sending a tweet." The buildAR platform enables you to embed your digital content into the physical world around you by linking it to images, locations and more. And now buildAR is bringing AR to the Web.

buildAR.com was launched in 2009 as the world's first Cloud based AR Authoring Platform and has been leading the way ever since.

Contact:
Alex Young
+1 415 800 3458

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SOURCE buildAR.com