Privacy backlash?
Facebook has come under fire in recent years for making it ‘difficult' for users to take charge of their profile security settings and choose who their information is shared with.
It would appear the site will face further security-based criticism with the addition of the Places location feature, despite putting some measures in place.
Users can uncheck ‘include me in ‘people here now' after I check in' privacy control to veto showing up on a specific location's page and can opt-out of the feature completely.
According to the blog: "With Places, you are in control of what you share and the people you share with. You choose whether or not to share your location when you check in at a place. When you check in, you can tag friends who are with you but only if their settings allow it. When you are tagged, you are always notified. Only your friends can see when you visit or are tagged at a place, unless you have specifically set your master privacy control to ‘Everyone.' You also have the choice to set more restrictive customized settings."
It will be possible for users to share their check-in information with third-party apps but these applications must receive permission from users first. However, friends will be able to share another friend's check-ins with apps unless users uncheck a new box in their privacy settings under ‘applications and websites' to stop their location being passed on.
Rainey Reitman, spokeswoman for US group Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, told The Guardian: "Location data is tied to people's safety - if people know where you are, they know where you're not. Your location data is some of the most sensitive data we have. I expect we'll see from the get-go people who don't understand how to control the privacy settings."
However, Ana Yang, Facebook Places product manager, told the newspaper: "People are already sharing their location on Facebook, so we looked at this to see if we could make it easier, more consistent and more social."
She reportedly added: "People should be establishing the social norms that it's OK to block the sketchy ex-boyfriend and in some ways it's easier to do this on Facebook than in real life."
Yang highlighted protections Facebook has put in place, such as adding a complete ‘opt out' and notifying a user when they have been tagged in a place. Apparently such a tag is as easy to remove as untagging an unflattering photo.
Users under the age of 18 can reportedly only share location information with their immediate friends and their real-time whereabouts will only be visible to friends at the same location.
