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August 07, 2014

Forever Tracked by Foursquare

Once the news was released that the National Security Agency (NSA) gathers billions of pieces of data, phone calls, emails, photos and videos from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, as well as other communications giants, then combs through the information for leads on national security threats, which is referred to as data mining, my thoughts turned to George Orwell’s novel, Big Brother.

It seems strange that in this day and time we need to be concerned with whether or not every action that I take is being monitored. There are a lot of apps in the world that are designed to make your life a little easier by tracking your location. In this way, if you are walking around the city and want to find an art gallery, or hardware store, the app can give you a list of places close to your location. It is convenient, handy and helpful.

The question to ask is when does it stop being helpful and really becomes an intrusion into your life? Foursquare is a location-based social networking website for mobile devices. Until late July 2014, the app was designed so that users would "check in" at venues using a mobile website, text messaging, or a device-specific application by selecting from a list of venues the application locates nearby your current location.

Foursquare has been rethinking about how people should interact with its location-based service. According to Foursquare, people use its app for two reasons either meeting up with friends, or discovering new restaurants, bars and other places to go. They found that people rarely do both at the same time.

The startup found that people still texted their friends to find out what they were doing and where they were. Foursquare decided that the best thing to do was to separate the application’s core functions. In this way, people who just want to keep up with friends will be able to do so more quickly and efficiently. On the one hand, we have Foursquare, which is aimed at discovering and checking new venues, while the new app called Swarm will continue to monitor your location status.

This division was born more out of a need to find a business model that would work for Foursquare and provide a revenue stream. This two app approach seems to be the latest shift for Foursquare. In February, the company entered into a deal that uses Foursquare’s location data and ports it into Microsoft’s Bing search. This was accomplished in exchange for a $15 million investment from Microsoft.

You might be asking yourself, “So what is the problem with this?” According to the Wall Street Journal, instead of earning badges, Foursquare users are now encouraged to leave tips about the places they frequent. They will also get push notifications of recommendations of restaurants and bars based on places they’ve visited. This still seems like it is OK, right?

The problem is that in the past and with just about all apps designed to track your location, you have to opt into it. This makes you aware of the fact that the app is tracking your location. The way that it has been set up is that once you install Swarm, which seems to be a very appropriate name, it automatically turns on its location service and constantly monitors where you are.

Normally, you want this type of service to know where you are so that you can get updated information on restaurants and the like, but shouldn’t you have an expectation that once you turn off your mobile device that the same hold true for the tracking service? Apparently, that is not the case if you have installed Swarm.

According to a survey taken by Pew Research a couple of years ago in 2012, about 33 percent of respondents to its study entitled “Internet & American Life Project”  said that they have turned off the location tracking capability on their devices. The main concern for doing this was privacy. While it is true that all the other social media apps track your location, the difference is that you can be assured of your privacy once you turn your device off.

Dennis Crowley, who is Foursquare’s CEO, believes that more users will be will to share their location due to the fact that in return they will be getting more value out of their service. He also mentions that the company will have more valuable data that it can sell to partners and advertisers. Crowley said, “It’s been our philosophy since we started that as long as we are recycling the data back to people, people will be interested in using the services. You can’t just collect a lot of information off people and not doing anything with it. It’s not a fair trade.”

While I agree with Crowley’s comment about fair trade, isn’t only fair trade when both parties agree to something? Is this something that you should expect from every app that you install on your device? If, for instance, you install a flashlight app, is there a reason that it should track your location? A company called GoldenShores Technology didn’t think so.

GoldenShores collected user location data through an Android flashlight app without asking the user to if they wanted to opt into the service. That is until the Federal Trade Commission mandated that the company make had to clearly and prominently explain to users why and how it collect location data.

Justin Brookman, who is the director of the Center for Democracy & Technology’s Project on Consumer Privacy, is quoted as saying in an email, “Persistent location tracking is the sort of thing that you should have to affirmatively decide to turn on and if it’s not evident from the nature of the app, I think they have an obligation to clearly message to you that it will be constantly collecting location information in the background.”

In response to the many concerns, Foursquare did update its privacy policy earlier this week. The new policy reads:

Your real-time location is not shared on the Foursquare app. If you write a tip, like, or otherwise interact with a place, users may infer that you have been to that location. Some content, like tips, are time stamped and other users could use that information to infer when you were at a place even though tips can be posted when you aren’t at the place you are leaving a tip about.

You will now also receive the following message when you install or update the app:

Foursquare uses your phone’s background location to help you find great places, and the best tips for when you’re there. You can change this at any time in your settings.

The question that I still have is why would Foursquare want to track your device’s location when it is not turned on? Although Crowley confirms that trend data provided to partners would never include users’ real names, this just does not seem reassuring to me. 




Edited by Adam Brandt


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