Facebook "Places"

Over at the Guardian, Jemima Kiss (real name) has a piece about a new Facebook function:

Facebook risks a privacy backlash today when it launches a feature that automatically shares information on the location of users with their online friends.

The feature allows mugs users to "check in" at locations which will then be shared with burglars their friends and Facebook network.

Users will also be able to browse to see which "friends" are nearby. Nice to be able to help out stalkers, eh?

"What we see with Facebook is a massive learning curve. Every time they make a change, consumers scramble to figure out the privacy settings," said Rainey Reitman, spokeswoman for Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in the US. "Location data is tied to people's safety – if people know where you are, they know where you're not. Your location data is some of the most sensitive data we have. I expect we'll see from the get-go people who don't understand how to control the privacy settings."

Doesn't affect us, yet. The service will launch in the US only at first.

Users are now being advised to be particularly judicious about who they accept as friends - but of course, that doesn't much help if you've been accepting every Tom, Dick and Harry until now...

One should of course also be aware that even information shared with an intimate network could be copied and pasted elsewhere. Don't post anything online you wouldn't want to get out publicly to anyone.

As always with FaceyB, the default settings are wrong. The primary location setting is switched on by default, which means any "places" tags are automatically being shared with immediate friends.

In time a version will launch in the UK, where research by Ofcom found that 45% of web browsing time on UK mobiles is spent on Facebook. Nearly one-third of Facebook's 500 million users access the site by mobile, it claims.

Anyone who spots problems/stories about this app, please let BBW know...

By Alex Deane

Hat tip: DL, SD

**UPDATE** This piece is well worth reading - a guide to the app, which covers all the issues around "Places"

Comments

[Dick Puddlecote]

"that doesn't much help if you've been accepting every Tom, Dick and Harry"

Oy!

[Alex Deane]

(tra)figuraspeech

[Andrew Ampers Taylor]

Reference: "The feature allows mugs users to "check in" at locations which will then be shared with burglars... ..."

If I were a Chief Constable, I would get one of my young woman PCs to make up a Facebook persona, talk about her exciting home with all the paintings and silver her daddy left her when he died.

Then I would tell my "friends" about the two week visit I was having in Sydney, all paid for my one of my Uncles and invite my friends to see me off at Heathrow next Thursday (or whenever). [So the date of departure is well documented]

All her Policemen friends would be sitting in a house waiting for the burglars.

What I am trying to say here is there is a plus and minus to every situation. And after the tenth burglar has been arrested throughout the country, they would treat Facebook information very carefully.

[seo training]

I definitely think that facebook places will be the death of foursquare, for a start they have more than 500 million users already.

Plus the fact that they are already attracting a great number of business users and coupons and incentives will follow me thinks,

I wrote about the launch of Facebook Places earlier today - http://www.siliconbeachtraining.co.uk/blog/facebook-places-a-geo-location-app-to-rival-foursquare/

[jossie]

Do you really want for everyone to know your location ?

[guy herbert]

You might want to check the default settings of any phone or camera with GPS. Many of them "geo-tag" your pictures by default, as well as recording in the file, date, time and the device it was taken with. It is not just what you can see in a picture that has consequences when you share it.

[Slacker]

Anyone who posts personal information on Farcebook is an idiot and deserves everything they get.

[dana]

I can't see this killing FourSquare... they kind of use the same technology but they do different things with it. 4SQ is kind of a game while FB places is just going to let a bunch of people tell everyone else where they're at... yet another way for us to share info that other people don't need to know in an attempt to grab attention...