Location-based applications like Facebook Places, Foursquare and others seem like fun to many smartphone users. They are used to let friends know where they are, to look up local businesses or to play games that earn them virtual points, badges or store discounts.
However, the sharing of one’s location has opened up a debate about privacy. The Wall Street Journal did an investigation of the issue and published an article in December 2010 about their findings.
The newspaper found that even when users are not using a location-sharing application, other apps on their phones are revealing their whereabouts.
Out of 101 smartphone applications, 47 of them “transmitted the phone’s location in some way.”
Kanokwan Klinhom, linguistics major at the University of Mississippi, uses location-based applications, or apps, with her phone, but only occasionally.
“I use it whenever I’m at some cool place that I’ve never been at before,” she said. “That’s how I record it as a memory on my (Facebook) page.”
Ross Haenfler, associate professor of sociology at Ole Miss, said he believes that many people take the new technologies for granted.
“In a sense we have become cyborgs, so into integrating smartphones, laptops, etc. into our daily existence that they might as well be part of us,” Haenfler said.
In fact, a study done by Carnegie Mellon University, titled “Location-Sharing Technologies: Privacy Risks and Controls,” looked into different location-sharing applications and released a survey on what people thought about the technologies.
The study found that only 66 percent of the applications had privacy policies at all, and applications that did have policies gathered and saved data such as one’s IP address and locations for an indefinite period of time.
“(It can deal with) intrusive effects; for example, government agencies knowing one’s patterns of daily life,” Haenfler said.
But Haenfler also said that location-based applications can be a good thing — allowing parents to monitor their children or law enforcement to find an accident more quickly.
Klinhom said that despite the possible privacy invasion she’s not worried about it.
“When using this app, you want to show other people where you are intentionally anyway,” she said.
Haenfler said we may be redefining what we consider public and private.
“Perhaps cultural notions of privacy are changing as everyone has access to 15 proverbial minutes of pseudo-fame,” he said. “Partly this may be due to how such exhibitionism is mediated by technology — posting something online may seem less of a breach of social norms than telling virtual strangers something in person.”