Right off the heels of Facebooks latest “Places” announcement, it seems like there has been a lot of news about location services recently. With all of the capability of geotagging, facial recognition, gps and cellular triangulation, it is starting to get me thinking of reducing my digital footprint and not opting to freely give away my privacy.
The potential of these technologies was always something that I had thought about in the back of my head. But one story from the New York Times sparked my interest and tied my concerns of all these technologies together. The story featured the IPhone geotagging technology and how it took Adam Savage from the hit TV show “The Mythbusters” by surprise. To sum it up, Savage took a photo of his Land Cruiser and posted it to Twitter with a tag of “Now it’s off to work”. Since that photo had geotagged data embeded into it, anyone could take it and most likely determine exactly where Savage lived. To any thief or celebrity stalker, this information would be extremely valuable. And I can just imagine the ramifications if paparazzi photographers started paying attention to Twitter photos to determine where their next shot for People magazine was going to come from. A group called the “White Hat Hackers” is trying to raise awareness about inadvertant information sharing by creating a site that analyzes tweets for geotagged photos. It shows these photos in a Twitter feed on its site as well as letting you know exactly where the photos were taken. It also sends the owner of the Twitter account a notification that they have shared location information from the picture tagged in their tweet. This is how Adam Savage was notified and he has since turned his geotagging off on his phone. See the article I have referenced here: http://yhoo.it/ar41Z7
Now back to Facebook “Places”:
I find what FourSquare has done with their check-in service very interesting. I mean who wouldn’t want to be rewarded for hanging out at their favorite places with coupons and special perks. You always hear about customer loyalty for frequent customers, but this takes it to a whole new level. And now that Facebook is looking to provide the same service, who knows what this monster will turn into. My concern here is that once again a large group of people are going to know your exact locations and trending habits by checking the largely public Facebook and Twitter services. You sign up for Facebook Places and then your status updates are going to fill up with exactly where you are at certain times. And if I’m honest with myself, I would never want ever single one of my Facebook friends or Twitter followers for that matter to know exactly where I am and what I like to do all the time. I listened to a CNET Buzz Out Loud podcast a few weeks back and one of the hosts basically explained how FourSquare automatically checked him in to a shop that was blocks away from one of his friends houses. The problem was that he had already informed his friend that he was “busy” and wasn’t in his buddy’s general area to stop by and hang out. {Busted} This again gets me thinking…..Where is our privacy going, and what will this turn into?
This also leads me into a technology that has been around for a while, but it is now turning public: Facial Recognition. The technology is here now where some companies (largely Google) can basically start storing facial recognition information about anyone who posts pictures on their services. Google is already offering facial recognition for their Picasa web albums service to easily tag your friends in your photos. It makes me think that it won’t be long until Facebook grabs a hold of this and then starts analyzing pictures for all the random people standing in the background of a picture of you and your best friend. I can just imagine seeing a little bubble popping up next to a blurry image of a guy in the background that says “This is Joe Johnson” with a subtitle options of “Tag Joe in this photo”, “Become Joe’s friend” or “Visit Joe Johnson’s profile” Then at that point you can see Joe’s Facebook status’s that are filled with all the locations he has visited as well as where all of his pictures are taken, and then see Joe’s exact and current position. Hah!
Now I am not trying to say that these technologies aren’t useful. They are extremely interesting and can be very helpful if used correctly. The jury is still out on where this technology is going and what will come of it all. But for now it has certainly grabbed my attention.
Speaking of good uses for technology, I am a fan of Picasa as a means to share pictures with friends and family. They have a new feature available that I will be trying out in the near future called Face Movies. Check out the video below and share any comments that you may have about your fears of location services!
Picasa Face Movie: http://bit.ly/c7BNiD
