Ask someone in the street what they think about the idea of governments tracking the location of innocent citizens and you’re likely to get a somewhat hostile response. In general people don’t like to think about the possibility of faceless organisations recording our every move; it’s creepy and the information stored about us is seen as potentially dangerous in the wrong hands.
But increasingly it seems that we may be freely giving away this kind of information online to friends, strangers and companies, who we may not be able to trust any more than a government to use the data responsibly.
I’m fairly happy that I’ve left a trail over several websites, including this one, that indicates to anyone that cares that I live in Manchester. It doesn’t really bother me. But should I be more concerned if people know that I am located at +53° 28′ 27.22″, -2° 14′ 37.26″?
This is exactly the predicament I found myself in yesterday when I noticed that the Twitterrific application on my iPhone has been happily publishing my location to the world via Twitter. I don’t remember asking for this feature to be switched on, but in the endless world of configuration options I may well have authorised it.
Putting my concerns about having this information in the public arena aside for a moment, there are actually a few reasons this may well be a good thing.
First of all it’s not all bad news for me that devices like my phone can actually determine my location. Having the world of Google Maps at my fingertips is always handy when I’m stuck in an unfamiliar city. And websites such as Loopt (currently available only in the USA) will soon be able to share my location data with friends so that, for example, I can receive a notification when one of my contacts happens to be within 100 meters of me.
Loopt tackles the delicate issue of exposing such personal information as a person’s specific location from two angles – firstly by assuring users that Loopt won’t sell the data it collects to third party companies or send commercial messages to users, and secondly by educating users as to making informed choices as to who they select to allow access to their data.
But in the wrong hands the information available about me would certainly be of use to a potential stalker, jealous lover, kidnapper or murderer if my life were anything like that exciting. Back in the real world I’m more concerned that I may be hassled by acquaintances in my vicinity that want to meet up for a chat when I’m either too busy or just don’t want to be disturbed by them. Equally I’m not sure that I’m totally comfortable with the idea that my friends can track my location on a website as I walk around the shops.
Location-based services would seem to be have one obvious thing in common with social networking sites – they both rely on attracting a critical mass of users to really take off. Would you be using facebook if it had only 100 users worldwide?
So far no service that tracks and shares user locations has reached a state of mass popularity, but it may well be a matter of time until a product like Loopt really takes off and we suddenly see the service swamped with people clamouring to be a part of the next big thing. Whether such services will ever become as ubiquitous as social networking remains to be seen – certainly there are many opponents who question whether enough people will ever wish to publish such sensitive information as their precise location online. But I do wonder if these were the same people that argued that the idea of people making public such details as their age, interests, conversations and a list of their friends would never take off.
Good to see you’re blogging, Joe. I think that a large part of the problem with people giving too much info about themselves, be it their location, contact info and so on, is that they don’t realise it’s happening, or that they don’t realise the risks (or at least implications) of their actions.
You yourself were inadvertently giving your precise (to a few metres) location out when twittering from your iPhone. You may not have spent the time to go through your Facebook privacy settings — and there are many — to make sure you’re only dishing out the juicy info to those you trust. If you, an iPhone-owning blogger, who has his finger somewhat on the pulse, are able to make those sorts of errors, then what hope does our beloved (but sadly, proverbial) Auntie Flo have?
It took a while for me to realise, for example, that by default, Facebook photo albums were (maybe still are) visible to ‘All of my networks and all of my friends’. That, for me, meant not only those on my friend list but anyone who cared to join the Manchester network could see exactly what I’d been up to, to a certain extent at least. Admittedly, all it took was twenty minutes of fiddling with privacy settings to sort it out, but it was worrisome nonetheless. I just wonder how many people don’t realise these settings are there to be fiddled with in the first place.
Generally I think the Web 2.0 goodness we’re growing accustomed to is a Good Thing and social networks will certainly grow stronger with the introduction of ‘location-based services’. I’ll be getting an iPhone at some point, and I look forward to the day when we can go for a coffee simply because we happen to be near each other. I’ll just make sure I know how to switch the thing off.
[...] 12, 2008 · No Comments Joe Gravett talks about the privacy concerns raised with his GPS-enabled [...]
My flatmate did the same thing when he was trying out various Twitter apps and I was trying to explain why it is (at least potentially) such an issue, but he didn’t seem to mind. This from a person who has always tried to be in-Googleable, so it struck me as strange he didn’t mind giving out his exact location to strangers.