Chapter 3: Mobile Personal Content Uncovered 63 Metadata (data about data) and its inclusion to shared content is another potential threat to privacy. To avoid distributing unwanted metadata, the privacy levels need to affect metadata as well. Metadata is discussed in more detail in Chapter 4. In the context of mobile personal content, the importance of privacy and security increases further. The devices, and therefore the content stored in and accessible with them, makes them vulnerable to threats such as theft, overseeing, and overhearing. For additional discussion related to personal content and privacy, refer to Karat et al. (2006). 3.4 Mobile Personal Content So far we have discussed personal content in general, mobile or oth- erwise. Now we focus our attention on mobile personal content. The fi rst and most important question is: What is the difference between personal content and mobile personal content? As discussed in section 2.3, a typical difference is quality; due to limitations in device capabili- ties and wireless network throughput, mobile content objects are often of lesser quality. However, the basic features of personal content are not different in a mobile context. The content can be classifi ed as in section 3.2, and the basic characteristics are similar. After all, it is just jumbles of bits and bytes that we are talking about. However, there are also differences, some of which are more indirect in nature. 3.4.1 Mobile Personal Content is Distributed Personal content, especially that which is mobile, resides in many dif- ferent places. It is created in your phone, downloaded to your home PC, or recorded with your PVR. Some of your personal content may be at your workplace, as many of us have pictures of spouses and children in the offi ce. One of the most characterizing features of digital content is how easily it is copied and shared across devices and net- works. In technical terms, we are talking about distributed content. In computing terms, if something is distributed, it means there is no one location where you can fi nd it. You cannot point to one device and say, “See, son, that’s were my content is.” Distribution causes many problems for managing your own content: where to fi nd it, how to make sure all important content is safe, how to manage copies, and other issues. Mobility brings the problems and benefi ts of distributed content management to the surface. With mobile