Abstract: An approach for managing the privacy and disclosure of location information associated with a computer system. For one aspect, a request is received from a requestor for a location property associated with a location of a computer system. It is then determined whether a privacy preference associated with the requestor has been specified. If not, a user may be prompted to supply privacy preferences associated with the requester. The privacy preferences are then applied to determine whether or not to provide the requested information. A user setting, such as a basic input-output system memory location setting, may also be implemented to enable and/or disable location-aware computing.

Abstract: Instant messaging clients provide location information in conjunction with registering their presence with an instant messaging server. The location information may be propagated to other instant messaging clients as well as to other commercial services, such as advertisers, and non-commercial services, so that actions can be taken with respect to locations of the instant messaging clients.