Andrew Hyde decided to commit location based service suicide because his interaction with sites like FourSquare led to him being discovered in the real world. It is disconcerting when someone shows up on your doorstep due to your interaction online. I know from personal experience due to a bad interaction with Samsung posting my personal information on their website and I subsequently received phone calls and had people show up at my door wondering where to pick up equipment. But that wasn’t due to my voluntary interaction with a public location based social network. All social networks are doing something behind the scenes with your information, from linking you to various people a la six-degrees-of-separation, to selling your contact information directly; you are an asset when you consume a free service. Wait, you are not just an asset, but you are pure profit as you work to meet certain goals that are set before you… check in here, there, notify everyone you know, scout out more people to link to, and in general be the big guy on the block. You get a buck off for that effort. So, in essence, you are compensated by consuming a possibly addictive drug. Cool.
I am a privacy advocate. I jump into social networks to grab my identity before someone else does. I’m not always proactive on that, but I encourage others to grab their name so they protect their identity. An angry neighbor or ex-girlfriend/boyfriend can harm your online reputation to a great degree. It was one of the reasons I created MobWatch.com as a social network online reputation manager. [Nope, I don't advertise my projects outside of this site]
The final paragraph on his blog is perfect for the modern consumer of all things internet:
I never thought I would advocate for privacy with these services. There are plenty of crazy folks in the public, enabling them with your name does nothing to add to crazy, you are still at risk, but I can’t help but realize how troubling this data can become when the startups that are hosting the data are motivated to have the most complete data set of the most influential people in the area. In other words, a private ‘with friends’ model is needed, but startups are not rewarded for keeping privacy, they are rewarded for having the hottest network (most public).
You never thought that privacy was important? That crazy wouldn’t find you? That is the most telling thing, so I would suspect that Mr. Hyde is sub-30 years old and has never used dial-up access. The proliferation of social networks that give location, or through the wanton disgorgement of personally identifiable information on networks like Facebook which can change their privacy policy with the frequency of a cheap HAM radio; allow someone to triangulate your position, social structure, and if important enough draw out the crazy in someone.
I haven’t checked into Facebook in over a month now. Nor Twitter. I am willing to use Twitter for commercial purposes, Facebook is dead to me quite literally, and sites like FourSquare are, as Mr. Hyde suggests; simply not worth the compensation.
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