Own your location data with Drupal and OwnTracks
morenstrat
Privacy and data protection have gained importance for many people in the course of the last couple of years. In his inspiring blog post "Winning back the Open Web", Drupal founder Dries Buytaert pointed out the importance of people being able to control and protect their personal data. In this session I would like to present one possibility to take back control over very sensitive information: location data.
The foundation of my session is OwnTracks, an Open Source project that allows for collecting (GPS) location data, for instance from smartphones, and submitting this data to various endpoints. I created one such endpoint, the Drupal OwnTracks module.
In this session I would like to present the functionality of OwnTracks in general and in particular the functionality that already exists in the Drupal OwnTracks module, such as:
- Location listings
- Current (most recent) location
- Location maps and tracks
- Waypoints
- Transitions
Locations are automatically sent from the smartphone app to the endpoint when a configurable distance or amount of time has passed. Waypoints are user defined locations with a radius, also know as geo fences. Transitions are automatically emitted by the smartphone app when the radius around a waypoint is entered or left.
The Drupal OwnTracks module stores locations, waypoints and transitions as custom entites and allows for presenting this data stand-alone, in Views listings or maps tracks, that is, lines drawn on maps from providers such as Open Street Map.
Besides presenting the existing functionality, I would also like to discuss future features of the OwnTracks Drupal module such as sharing location data or live maps with instant location updates.