Out-Law News 2 min. read
20 Aug 2010, 9:48 am
Facebook Places allows those who use the site on mobile devices to 'check in' wherever they are, broadcasting their location to online contacts. It believes that this will enable greater real-life interaction with friends.
"Ever gone to a show, only to find out afterward that your friends were there too? With Places, you can discover moments when you and your friends are at the same place at the same time," said Facebook Places product manager Michael Sharon in a blog post.
"You have the option to share your location by 'checking in' to that place and letting friends know where you are. You can easily see if any of your friends have also chosen to check in nearby," he said.
Facebook has been repeatedly criticised for the default settings on its services which privacy activists have claimed release increasing amounts of personal information to the general public.
The default setting on Facebook Place is that locations are visible only to a person's Facebook 'friends', which the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California welcomed. But it said that the service had other features which could pose a threat to users' privacy.
"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," said an ACLU Northern California statement. "But when it comes to opting out of that feature, you are only given a 'not now' option (aka ask me again later). 'No' isn’t one of the easy options."
The body said that the situation is worse for people who themselves are users of the Places service, since they can be identified as being in a location by other people even more easily than non-users.
"If you use Places yourself, you aren’t even given a 'not now'; you’re just told that friends are able to check-in for you and left to discover for yourself that you can change this setting by digging into your privacy controls," it said.
The ACLU of Northern California also said that a 'here now' feature in Places allows any Facebook user who is checked into the same geographic location to see that you are there. That 'here now' service is automatically activated for any user who has a piece of information set for 'everyone' to see, and cannot be restricted to 'friends', the body said.
Facebook's Sharon said in his post that users did have control over Places' features.
"When your friends check you in, it is as if you have checked in at that place yourself. You also will appear checked-in to your friends," he said. "If you do not allow friends to check you in, then when they tag you at a place, your name will appear in the same way it appears in a tagged status update. You will not appear checked-in at that place."
"You can always remove any Places check-in or tag using your mobile device or on the web. It's like removing yourself from a photo tag," said Sharon.
