Girls Around Me - Why Is Everyone So Surprised?

With the revelation of the "Girls Around Me" app and the open API for Foursquare, it seems that many are up in arms about what has been shown by iFree as a "stalking" of women. While there may be safety concerns which are legitimate ones being raised, the bigger issue here is one of privacy on the web. Or to put it another what, the lack of concern about providing details about an individual or their activities. The privacy concerns of a few are raising major concerns about personal information, such as when Facebook lets personal details leak out. While I agree that we need to be very concerned about what can be found about us as individuals on the web, I am part of a minority. Most are not concerned about the information that they put up and provides information about them. It seems that a large group of people is very surprised by what they are seeing by the "Girls Around Me" app.

If you are putting your personal movements on the web, why are you surprised someone is reporting on it?

While iFree has defended their app, it has been shutdown by Foursquare for a violation of their policies. While this very specific situation may be correct to be stopped, there is a much bigger issue at hand which most just seem to ignore in their daily lives. That is the willingness to provide details on the web that they would not make public to the world around them. Facebook has been a tremendous example of how willing people are to reveal information about themselves to friends as to what they are doing. If they "Friend" a lot of people, then everyone knows what they are doing and where they are going. Much of this is public as most do not take the time to truly lock down their Facebook accounts the way that they should.



Then you add in the Foursquare app that so many are willing to "check in" to show where they are at and you have the opportunity for others to gather information. This is exactly what iFree has done. They have aggregated information from Foursquare and Facebook to show who you are and where you are at. While their app focused on the female population, this kind of aggregation could be done on just about anyone. It just takes some coding and effort to make this happen.

Do you think that the government is not doing the same thing?

You bet they are. There is nothing to stop them from using readily available information such as Foursquare and Facebook to gather information about you and where you are. It is becoming all to easy for that to happen and the population at large is more than willing to add information about their daily activities to feed the web. Facebook information has been talked about for years and the most recent issue is employers asking for Facebook passwords in interviews or on the job. But the bigger problem is that everyone is more than willing to reveal almost anything about themselves on the web.

The big attraction on Foursquare is to get badges and so many participate in it. There is also twitter will you get play by play information from so many. You combine the two and you have too much information. Many have tied the two together which creates a dangerous combination. They have set things up so that when they check in, it Tweets about where they currently are. Tweets are generally available and so if someone wanted to track you, it would become very easy. You would not need an app to do that, only "follow" the person who checks in and tweets about it. Jealous partners would know exactly where you are at.

Even worse are those who might be stalking as talked about earlier. It is getting much easier for those activities. Then there is the aspect of someone burglarizing your home while you are out because you tell everyone where you are at. Even if you do not use Foursquare, but put information on Facebook while you are on vacation, you are setting yourself up to get hit. There is just too much information available online.

The concept of "Big Brother" watching you was a concern 30 or 40 years ago, but of late has become a non-issue until something happens such as this. The problem is that few people really change their day to day activities and continue on as normal.

We should not be surprised if we see more of these kinds of things being reported.