Yesterday, Facebook officially launched Facebook Places, their answer to Foursquare and other location-based apps. It’s everywhere, even your iPhone. All you need to know is that an extra element of stalking you has been added to make it even easier for Uncle Creepy To track you down. But never fear, Failbookers, for you can keep yourself protected.
Thoughts? Concerns? Sexual proclivities?
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Who ever thought this was a good idea? So now burglars will know when your not home, stalkers will know where to find you, what could possibly go wrong?
The Gov’t is already stalking you through your GPS enabled phone. Now the criminals will have the same capabilities.
That reminds me of when in Simpsons Hit and Run Homer says: “Marge, those black vans are spying on us!” and then Marge says “Oh, Homey! You’re so sexy when you’re paranoid!”
True, very true. But you do know that your phone BROADCASTS its location to 911 emergency call centers right? That’s how they find you incase of an emergency.
You have to SHARE your location, and if you decide you want to share it, you can set it up where only your friends, or certain friends, or only you, or NOBODY can see it. SO if you don’t share it, nobody can see it. And if you’ve got a stalker or a burgler on your friends list, you can hide it from them.
Personally, I think that if those kinds of people are on your friends list, maybe FB Places isn’t your biggest issue… I wouldn’t have someone who was stalking me on my friends list. Jus’sayin’.
“You have to SHARE your location, and if you decide you want to share it, you can set it up where only your friends, or certain friends, or only you, or NOBODY can see it.”
You forgot to mention hackers and hackers/rapists.
Don’t update FB yet. The “places” feature conflicts with some jailbreak apps, rendering Facebook useless (cannot connect or login), and even when you uninstall the conflicting jb apps – biteSMS in my case – I got an error saying Places isn’t supported in my region yet. Not worth the update. In fact, it’s a FAIL.
It’s only available in the US, and even then only in certain areas. it’s only in Beta stages for now.
Ya, I’ve been reading that new regions will be rolled out over the next few days, so I guess my second point isn’t that big of a deal.
The real fail is you saying an app is fail, even though you run the OS in a not-intended way.
The logo is a four in a square. Four… square… FOURSQUARE. FourSquare should ready their lawyers.
I hadn’t noticed that yet… lol, way to go Facebook. :p
They teamed up with foursquare……. Fail
Stalkers and burglars oh my! Meh.
You’d have to actually be dumb enough to use it without changing the privacy settings if you friend people you don’t really know. Which is most people sadly enough.
For those of us who only friend people we want to know every detail of their lives and mostly trust, or at least know how to make and use lists, it’s not a terribly bad idea.
Though it is pretty much a waste of dev time since foursquare and yelp do it better.
Luckily the default settings are better than usual for FB. Friends can’t tag you somewhere unless you change it and it’s set to only friends see your places.
Pffft! 90% of my FB info is blank or… breaks the EULA… But how are they going to prove it without breaking the law themselves?
Too bad there was that problem a few months ago where FB allowed EVERYONE to see your profile regardless of what your privacy settings were. Oops.
Just pointing out it could be worse
The default settings vary. I have multiple accounts and when I checked the settings after reading the article, I found that one account had different default settings than the other. Thankfully, the one account with the “looser” settings is the one with false info for just about everything (my home address is the same as the fictitious Munsters family), and friends on that one have me listed by a different name.
There’s no such person as “Uncle Creepy” or “Creepy Teddy Bear” or whatever other retarded characters your little cult has come up with.
…it’s Pedobear…
Yeah, pedophiles, rapists, and murderers are fictional, the September 11th attacks never happened, and we all live in a happy-happy world where the ground is made of candy. Somebody has had a few to many hits of X.
P.S. In case you’re too much of a moron to figure it out “pedobear” is a less morbid shorthand for online pedophiles and child molesters and “Uncle Creapy” is shorthand for perverts.
That hurt my feelings. You owe me a hug.
I don’t see how it’s different than posting “At Jim’s Pub with @Joe Schmoe.”
And on top of that, it looks like an opt-in feature, not an opt-out one. You’re not automatically signed up to let others “place” you.
I don’t see the issue.
Let me spell it out for you. H-A-C-K-E-R-S. Yes, that’s right, those people with the amazing computer skills, there are some (a scant few) who want to do more than steel your identity. And now they can access your exact location! (that must make stalking/serial murder sooo much easier)
Just a quick note, that if you choose customize (just under friends only) you can mark it as Only me
For me, it seems really dangerous, because if I am in vacation, my friends could locate me and if a robber sees where I am, he may go to my house and break into it. Honestly, I hate Facebook since they updated their website and removed Facebook Lite, which was a great service.
i have an XM pioneer and not an ipod but i’m just wondering isn’t it possible to turn off the location setting in the ipod itself
lol let’m stalk me i gotthe 2nd on myside and i live in texas haha… Remmington 30.06, Mossburg 500 12 gauge, and a S&M .357 magnum… stalk me if you dare
Wow, not only can you share your enter life with random strangers on the internet, you can share your EXACT GEOSPATIAL COORDINATES TOO!
more fails, less articles, if I want news I’ll go to CNN.