Facebook Tries, Although It Is Hard With Location Based Networking, To Stop Privacy From Being Taken Away

Facebook Places gets a new location-based networking program to start working with. This should be great for the social site. It is easy to see where your friends are at and know which friends are the closest with Facebook Places when you have a smartphone that uses GPS. Facebook Places also lets users tag friends who are with them. Places also suggests other locations nearby the user may be interested in. Privacy for Facebook is debated more hotly with this new product being used. Facebook Places gives companies a powerful tool for mobile advertising and search. It could also be used by burglars and other criminals to identify targets. Personal details is vulnerable by default, but Places can be disabled in Facebook privacy settings.

Facebook Places – a tool for mobile advertising

Friends will automatically see all of a users details that is location based with Facebook Places based upon off of other networks like Foursquare and Gowalla. Michael Sharon, product manager for Places, told the New York Times that Places was meant to get the 500 million Facebook users to increase their usage of the social networking service. Places will do a lot better if it is able to get an advantage over Google with advertising with all of the small businesses for Facebook, says the Times. Advertising could possibly be worked on with both companies. The companies specifically should be working on phones. Identity and behavior is studied this way. Corporations will benefit when knowing what human behavior is turning into.

Privacy becomes a problem with Facebook Places

Sam Diaz from ZDNet says that it is really just weird that Facebook would give the location of users with Places to help with advertising. Diaz writes that given the ability of guests at a party at his home turning his address into a public “place” on Facebook, his only recourse is to flag his address to have it removed. Tagging friends with you is one more concern that he has. It would suck if your friend tagged you somewhere you weren’t intended to be. You can actually decide whether or not you get tagged. Just go look at your privacy settings. Diaz also was worried that burglars would look to see “who’s not home” on Facebook Places and use that.

Disable Facebook Places

Facebook users should listen up. Keep your location on private settings with tips from Lifehacker. Change your Facebook privacy settings to stop Facebook Places. Facebook Places default settings allow locations where a user checks in to be seen by friends. Also, Facebook lets you be seen on your Facebook page by default. You’ll be seen by anyone searching for users near them. Facebook has one other thing you should know about this default privacy setting. Friends of friends can see it meaning individuals you don’t know might know exactly where you are.

Find more info on this subject

New York Times

nytimes.com/2010/08/19/technology/19facebook.html?ref=technology

ZDNet

zdnet.com/blog/btl/facebook-launches-places-geo-location-service-thats-both-cool-and-creepy/38203

Lifehacker

lifehacker.com/5616395/how-to-disable-facebook-places

Can you spot the failure in this Facebook page?