The Dangers of Location Services and Social Networks
The Dangers of Location Services and Social Networks
The growth of social networks and smartphones over the past few years has come with a dangerous side-effect: the violation of privacy and security. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter may appear to be a fun way to keep in touch or to easily socialize with friends and family, but as these networks continue to grow some very serious privacy and security concerns emerge. Interestingly these concerns could be easily prevented by any educated user. The problem occurs when social network and smartphone companies force the average user to have to work towards gaining this education by hiding or not fully explaining some of their settings and features. One of the biggest cases of this is the recent emergence of coordinate-based apps on smartphones. In many of these apps, location services – a setting that allows the app to record the user’s exact coordinates at a given time – is turned on by default; the average user may never even be aware of its existence. This is not the only example of technology designed to follow people, there are many more new features being developed all the time to track and record an individual’s movements, despite their fun and harmless appearance; user education has become necessary for security.
Since Facebook’s launch in 2004, it has been improving its ability for connected users to find out as much information as possible regarding the activities of others. Recently, Facebook has released a feature known as Check-in. This feature allows the user to post their current location along with some explanatory text. Because of the enabling of location services on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, Facebook already knows exactly where the user is, saving time and effort required in manually searching for that location. Another feature came along with this one, allowing the user to advertise their general location at the bottom of a post and, once again, this feature is
The growth of social networks and smartphones over the past few years has come with a dangerous side-effect: the violation of privacy and security. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter may appear to be a fun way to keep in touch or to easily socialize with friends and family, but as these networks continue to grow some very serious privacy and security concerns emerge. Interestingly these concerns could be easily prevented by any educated user. The problem occurs when social network and smartphone companies force the average user to have to work towards gaining this education by hiding or not fully explaining some of their settings and features. One of the biggest cases of this is the recent emergence of coordinate-based apps on smartphones. In many of these apps, location services – a setting that allows the app to record the user’s exact coordinates at a given time – is turned on by default; the average user may never even be aware of its existence. This is not the only example of technology designed to follow people, there are many more new features being developed all the time to track and record an individual’s movements, despite their fun and harmless appearance; user education has become necessary for security.
Since Facebook’s launch in 2004, it has been improving its ability for connected users to find out as much information as possible regarding the activities of others. Recently, Facebook has released a feature known as Check-in. This feature allows the user to post their current location along with some explanatory text. Because of the enabling of location services on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, Facebook already knows exactly where the user is, saving time and effort required in manually searching for that location. Another feature came along with this one, allowing the user to advertise their general location at the bottom of a post and, once again, this feature is
Citations: Net Security, Geotagging risks and solutions, http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=9734; posted on August 13, 2010 WikiHow, How to Avoid the Potential Risks of Geotagging, http://www.wikihow.com/Avoid-the-Potential-Risks-of-Geotagging; last updated on October 21, 2012