Location-based services

A location-based service (LBS) is a software-level service that uses location data to control features. As such LBS is an information service and has a number of uses in social networking today as information, in entertainment or security, which is accessible with mobile devices through the mobile network and which uses information on the geographical position of the mobile device.

LBS can be used in a variety of contexts, such as health, indoor object search, entertainment, work, personal life, etc.

LBS is critical to many businesses as well as government organizations to drive real insight from data tied to a specific location where activities take place. The spatial patterns that location-related data and services can provide is one of its most powerful and useful aspect where location is a common denominator in all of these activities and can be leveraged to better understand patterns and relationships.

LBS include services to identify a location of a person or object, such as discovering the nearest banking cash machine (ATM) or the whereabouts of a friend or employee. LBS include parcel tracking and vehicle tracking services. LBS can include mobile commerce when taking the form of coupons or advertising directed at customers based on their current location. They include personalized weather services and even location-based games. They are an example of telecommunication convergence.

This concept of location based systems is not compliant with the standardized concept of real-time locating systems (RTLS) and related local services, as noted in ISO/IEC 19762-5 and ISO/IEC 24730-1. While networked computing devices generally do very well to inform consumers of days old data, the computing devices themselves can also be tracked, even in real-time. LBS privacy issues arise in that context, and are documented below.

Location-based services (LBS) are a part of virtually all control and policy systems which work in computers today. They have evolved from simple synchronization based service models to authenticated and complex tools for implementing virtually any location based service model or facility.

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