Facebook Places
The new application from Facebook that lets your friends know where you are is at the centre of a new privacy row today. Facebook “Places” uses your smartphone’s GPS and Wi-Fi detection capabilities to allow you to broadcast your whereabouts to your contacts at the tap of a button. The problem, for some privacy advocates, is that your friends can also broadcast where you are without your permission.
Hot on the heels of earlier privacy concerns, Facebook is now facing flack from certain groups who are calling for an “opt-in” system, rather than the “opt out if you don’t want it” method that has been employed.
The ACLU, unhappy with the new feature’s privacy controls, said in a statement: “In the world of Facebook Places, ‘no’ is unfortunately not an option,” “Places allows your friends to tag you when they check in somewhere, and Facebook makes it very easy to say ‘yes’ to allowing your friends to check in for you.
But when it comes to opting out of that feature, you are only given a ‘not now’ option. ‘No’ isn’t one of the easy options.”
Barry Schnitt, Facebook spokeman, replied to the accusations saying that he was disappointed.
“No one can be checked in to a location without their explicit permission. Many third parties have applauded our controls, indicating that people have more protections using Facebook Places than other widely used location services available today,” Schnitt said.
Facebook is widely expected to dominate so-called “social mapping” online with this new feature, with Google now looking to incorporate some kind of social aspect into its Google Maps.
The new feature has also been seen, in some quarters, as the death-knell for Foursquare, widely considered to be the originators of online social mapping applications.
