Over-sharing and Location Awareness
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February 24, 2010
Filed under Consumer Privacy, Location
The following is a guest blog post provided by Frank Groeneveld, Barry Borsboom and Boy van Amstel. They are the creators of PleaseRobMe.com, a website that uses Twitter's search functionality to show location-based messages. Their goal is to raise awareness about the potential risks of location-awareness and over-sharing. The opinions here are theirs only and do not necessarily represent those of CDT.
Over the last few years the consensus about privacy on the Internet seems to have changed a lot. A few years ago, people were still hesitant about using their real names online, but nowadays people are comfortable sharing their exact location with the whole world.
Where does this change in consensus come from? Are people starting to feel too comfortable? We're not sure, but over-sharing might result in more risk and unintended consequence than one might think, especially in the long run.
The issue with location-based information is that it exposes another layer of personal information that, frankly, we haven't had to think much about: our exact physical location at anytime, anywhere. If you're comfortable being a human homing beacon, that's fine, we just want you to be fully aware of what that means and the potential risks it might involve.
Social networks have increased enormously in size and number. Most of them allow you to relay messages between different sites and it's easy to lose track of just how much information you might be giving away and how many people have free access to it.. These new technologies make it increasingly easy to share potentially sensitive personal information, like your exact location. People might be over-sharing without knowing about it. For example, you might relay your Foursquare location to your public Twitter account and by doing this expose the message to the whole world (Twitter: "Our default is almost always to make the information you provide public").
Most social networks have good search functionalities. People use such search features to find their friends or things they might be interested in. However, this means others can find them and their information as well. It's important to be aware of privacy settings, to control the reach your messages have. If you allow your messages to travel between different social networks, this becomes more complicated. Information you trust to your friends might end up somewhere else.
The rate at which new technology develops allows us to do more amazing stuff every day. It's important to reconsider basic things like privacy at the same pace.
Alternatives
There are still coming up alternatives offering something that has been lost over the last years.
Sites like http://www.whapee.com allow to upload geotagged images anonymously and account free. I think this is the only passable way to publish your geolocation as long as you don't catalogue your home there.
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]Over sharing
I agree with everything that you guys have to say. People over share their information all of the time. Hopefully people will learn from what you'll have done.
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]Subject
never update your location on 4square by mobilephone
thanks for sharing
gati - jakarta
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]Personal Privacy Threat
One of the bigger privacy problems I've seen lately is how people at http://www.dirtyphonebook.com are posting peoples location and other PERSONAL information without PERMISSION. I'd also advise people to be wary of this because it can really DAMAGE your reputation or personal safety and this is definitely questionable to me in more ways than just check-in services are because at least you can control this.
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]Rob ME???? ROFLMAO
I'd love to see some fucker Rob me, that would be fun! Gotta get your carry license fools!!! Who gives a shit, live life and quit fucking worrying like a pussy pansey.
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]incredible.
Wow you're pretty tough when commenting on a web page.... However the point they're trying to make is that by sharing your location you're letting people know you're not home, in which case no amount of guns or you're incredible strength and agility (I'm sure) will really matter. Also, living your life really has nothing to do with simply taking certain precautions. If that is your general feeling for it then you should just go out and spray paint your name, social security number, and birth date on the side of some wall. Or go out for a few hours and leave your front door open with a huge sign saying "nobody's home!" That's living without worrying right? No, that's just being stupid. The problem is a lot of times people don't realize that they are being stupid, and sometimes sites like these have to point it out to them. And sometimes people like me have to point out how stupid people like you are. Oh yeah, and while I believe in the right for everyone to own a gun, quit being a pussy pansy and learn how to fight, bitch.
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]Raising Awareness, Well done.
Nice Work!
Sometimes it needs out there examples for people to take a step back. . .I thought this was a clever way of turning it on its head.
"The dangers just need highlighting and the buzz around the website http://pleaserobme.com/ which presents a distressing, if not humourous perspective on this topic."
Full post - http://bit.ly/cgtyVy
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]You guys worry too much
even if burglars are as high-tech as you might say, this doesn't sound to me like sufficient information for anyone to go very far out of their way to burgle your house. all they know is this is a house where at least one person isn't there, and that house may have a computer or cell phone, if they didn't take it with them. the burglars could learn more the old-fashioned way, by casing the place--they'd probably still have to do that. besides, i would think a million locations broadcast every minute would be overwhelming.
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]Subject
To suggest that it may be overwhelming to have so much potentially useful information is perhaps a little short-sighted. I feel that there is every chance that highly specific information about a person's location, and whether they have left to go on holiday has the potential to be very useful to someone interested in breaking in to a home. In any case, I don't believe that this specific event is what the web site is about. The aim is to draw people's attention to the very real risk of sharing information too freely with untrusted third parties. But let's look at who is "trusted". For the average Joe on sites like Facebook or Twitter, each member has upwards of 100 "friends". Many of these friends will already know whether "Joe" lives alone, or with family, will know things like who is likely to be going on the holiday proudly announced on the sharing site... so the question is, where to burglars come from? Surely none of my friends could be burglars? Well, the burglars are friends with someone! And who's to say they're not technically minded... what would you call a hacker, or someone who writes computer viruses? Criminals are gathering speed in their technical abilities, and despite the fact that burglary is a less likely venture for those who are... it has the potential to attract opportunists, so why take the risk?
As is stated elsewhere... you don't have to be a criminal to need privacy, you might just not want criminals to know everything about you!
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]Timely News -- actually, hopefully not too late!
Yesterday evening I was at a premiere local event for social marketing and I sat next to a lady who works in forensics... we had a smashing chat about how she uses social media to "nab the culprits"... and today I find this timely piece.
In a day and age where we are x-rayed (down to beneath the undies) when we travel by plane, I fear that the young and coming generations will be all too transparent with many of the topics and ideas my and older generations kept under the blanket.
If anyone has published this information in other languages, I would be greatful to hear about it.
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]Subject
We are also concerned about the privacy of these check in products but recognise the benefits of location services. To overcome the privacy issues we have developed an iPhone app called "Im OK" that allows you to check in privately with family, friends and work mates without broadcasting your location to the world.
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]Subject
asasasa
anybody's here?
Enter your comment here...*
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]Loved it, thanks for making waves
Good to see we Dutch still influence the world ;-)
I loved your initiative, the waves it made, and all the attention it got. Thanks! My take on it: for a while I was mildly wondering (hey it's a free world) about people letting Twitter know they checked in @home on Foursquare, giving their full NAD: country, city, street name and number
@stoweboyd wrote a splendid post on what he calls 'publicy' on http://www.stoweboyd.com/message/2009/12/30/secrecy-privacy-publicy.html
The circle is getting wider peeps and tweeps, "The more individual we become, the more we become one" (quote by @patrickbrinksma) - social is knocking on your door
Keep up the good work! Thanks again, hope to hear from you soon
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