Sites like FourSquare are pretty cool. The basic idea is that by “checking in” at a location friends will know to find you there, and businesses will get to know their best customers.
But one concern is that it doesn’t take a sophisticated hacker to track another person’s location. Earlier this year, a trio of Dutch software developers put up a site called PleaseRobMe.com. The principle was simple: pull data from Twitter and Foursquare and post the username and (self-reported) locations. And many users weren’t paying attention to their privacy settings.
This has given me pause on a number of occasions–even for blogging while on vacation. I see this as a great counterargument to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that “the age of privacy is over.” There are a few perfectly legitimate reasons to keep some information private.
via Location Services Raise Privacy Concerns – International Business Times.