How geolocation services can be more security friendly
Geolocation apps like Foursquare and Gowalla keep people in touch with what their friends are doing in real time. If you see a friend hop into a restaurant you’ve always wanted to try, you can ask what their impression of it was. If you see that someone’s at Yankee Stadium the same time you are, you can meet up during the 7th inning stretch.
The problem with these systems is that they’re all-or-nothing, and in real time. Also, people can track your check-ins and get your daily habits. This can be a blessing and a curse, especially when there’s no way to hide your data. Looking at Foursquare’s settings, there’s no option to make your data private, known only to your friends.
Tomorrow, Facebook is expected to announce its new geolocation feature. This can be significant because they do have one thing that Foursquare and Gowalla do not: security levels. Outlined below are ways that geolocation services can use a similar system to Facebook’s security levels to make check-ins more secure:
Ignore certain locations – Maybe you don’t want one or more people knowing you go to a specific place. It could be a fast food place, or just somewhere you’d like to keep private, but you’d like others to know that you’re there. Different tiers of security can give me the ability to do this.
Journal update – Rather than give out where you are in real time, the service can create a log. This way, they can see a list of places where you’ve been, maybe hours or days after you’ve been there, such as a vacation. Couple this with pictures and snippets of text that you’ve written about places, you can have a journal of your travels.
Temporary friends – You may want to give certain people limited access to your geolocation data most of the year, but if you’re in a group that are at a conference together (eg: SXSW, MacWorld), you can give people temporary access for a limited time without completely turning them off when the conference is over.
Equal share levels – Did you friend someone but they’re not sharing as much as you are? Their security level can automatically drop in this case.
Delayed updates – Rather than give your location away in real-time to everyone, you could set certain people to get your updates a few hours later. This will allow you to have time to get home before your update goes out.
Category: Social Media, Technology
