On the Ethics of Using Publicly-Available Data

Publicly-available mobile data can be used to derive fine grain commuting and travel patterns. These types of data include geocoded or geotagged discrete units of communication: messages, posts, tweets, status updates, check-ins, images and the like on a variety of social networking services. Clearly, there are ethical issues concerning the use of such data, particularly the invasion of privacy. A review of the literature has been done to explore these issues.