So yeah, yesterday we mentioned that Google was reportedly planning on adding a feature to its Goggles app that would allow users to pull in a person’s information just by taking a picture of the person with their phone. Well, according to Google, that ain’t happening… [The Inquirer]

Elsewhere in creepy innovations (literally) – Creepy is a new app (for Windows or Linux) that apparently can tell the user geolocation information for any person who uses Foursquare, Twitter, and/or Flickr to disclose their location – indicating where that user “spends most of his/her time”… [Lifehacker]

And today in privacy litigation – apparently LinkedIn is the latest web giant to get sued for allegedly violating its users’ privacy. Apparently a California man thinks the fact that LinkedIn discloses a users unique ID to third party advertisers (allowing them to place a tracking cookie on his computer, and identify him by name) means a court should award him damages for violating his privacy, though LinkedIn thinks the case lacks merit… [Mediapost]

Finally, we’ve mentioned how some companies aren’t waiting for government to regulate privacy (or at least implement the FTC’s proposed “Do Not Track” concept), including browser makers like Microsoft and Mozilla. Apparently also implementing “Do Not Track” is the AP News Registry… [The Mozilla Blog]

Foursquare and other location-based services are probably the hottest services of 2010 as far as digital goes, but when working with clients, it requires PR (and marketing) professionals to consider privacy [PR Week]

The privacy implications of Facebook‘s recently-announced Relationship pages, which show publicly-shared information and photos that involve two particular Facebook users… [InformationWeek]

Elsewhere on the Facebook privacy front – Facebook disclosed that a 3rd party was paying for user ID information from Facebook developers, but that it had suspended developers who sold such info and presumably will continue to do so to protect users’ privacy [WSJ]

Furthermore, it mentioned that it had come up with a technical solution that would make it impossible to share user IDs with 3rd parties and that it would be working with browser vendors to further make sure user IDs don’t make it into other peoples’ hands… [AFP]

While we’re at it, this isn’t Facebook related, but Facebook’s execs could probably learn a thing or two from reading this post on how to avoid online privacy issues… [GigaOm]

Hopefully none of your were holding your breath waiting for the anti-Facebook, Diaspora’s public alpha release in October, because it’s now been moved back to Thanksgiving [TechCrunch]

For those of you worried about Firesheep – the Firefox add-on that lets users’ access other users’ social networking profiles (and any other sites/services they may be logged into at the moment) through unsecure wireless networks – you probably want to download FireShepherd [Gizmodo]

Hot on the privacy trail lately, Facebook announced a couple of new privacy/security features yesterday – the first is one-time passwords Facebook will text to you if you are logging in from an unsecure location and don’t want to use your normal password, and the second is the ability to sign out of Facebook remotely [Facebook blog]

We wrote about the new service, Wheretheladies.at, over at our sister blog, the Digital Breakfast last week, but here’s the privacy side of that service – it culls all Foursquare check-ins to look for female users (based on first name), and displays their pictures, regardless of whether those female users want random anonymous Wheretheladies.at users to know where they are or not [New Statesman]

And finally, for you Safari-using privacy lovers, Incognito is a new Safari plug-in that blocks Google Analytics and Google Ad Sense from collecting data about you [PC World]

A quick look at the majority of Apple‘s iOS4′s privacy implications [PC World]

But beyond that, the EFF warns that Apple’s latest patent application is basically a way for Apple to spy on iPhone users. Technically, I believe the patent is for technology that will allow Apple to detect whether an iPhone has been jailbroken (and “punish” its user), but since the technology would allow Apple to record a user’s voice, take a user’s picture using the iPhone’s camera or apparently even detect a user’s heartbeat (why that would help them identify jailbroken users is far beyond me), it could obviously have this effect [EFF Deeplinks Blog]

“5 Tips to ‘Secure’ Your Foursquare Check-ins” [CIO]

A refresher on how retailers/supermarkets, etc. gather consumer purchasing data from loyalty card programs and how manufacturers use that data [News OK]

In July 2009 (note: BEFORE Facebook‘s US privacy fiasco), Canada’s Privacy Czar told Facebook it needed to bring its privacy settings in line with Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. Now that the clock has run, the Czar is set to determine whether the improvements Facebook has made over the last year has effectively done so… [Montreal Gazette]

Here’s an interesting element of privacy you may not be aware of – smartphone cameras (at least iPhone cameras, anyway) can embed longitudinal and latitudinal data into photos, that can then be transmitted if you share those photos via Twitter or elsewhere (which, of course, means you’re unintentionally sharing your location whilst sharing your photo). This article explains how this all works and how you can turn the feature off…you know, if you care about controlling how you disclose your location or whatever (particularly relevant if the location is your own home)… [NY Times]

As we mentioned here last week, a federal court of appeals ruled that police could not use GPS to track a suspect’s movement without a warrant, or put another way, we all have a reasonable expectation of privacy in where we go and what we do (that precludes the government from intruding on our privacy without a warrant…more or less). But, did this opinion lay some of the groundwork for courts to consider check-ins, and if/when it does, will the fact that users voluntarily disclose their locations (as opposed to an illegally government-installed GPS device) mean we don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy in our check ins? [TechFlash]

Well, I guess we can’t go more than a week or so without some type of Facebook privacy failure. This week, it’s a bug that lets anyone see a Facebook users name and picture via the Facebook login screen. Specifically, if you type in the wrong email address (or if you purposefully type in an email address not your own), the resulting error page will show you the person’s name and picture associated with that email address, assuming that email address is linked to a Facebook user (although it doesn’t have to be the users sign on email, as long as it’s an email listed somewhere in the user’s profile). Not like it reveals anything super personal, but it is a way to gather name/email data for Facebook users that could then be sold or maybe used in some other type of malicious way [ZD Net]

And finally, not much to say about it, but Apple released an iOS update yesterday to fix that PDF security hole exposed last week… [Mac Observer]

I’ve seen this in a couple of different places over the past couple of days and haven’t posted it for whatever reason…but hey, it’s Friday and [hopefully] most of you are off on some exciting and exotic vacation for July 4th weekend, so why not – A UK woman is up in arms over a Google Street View picture of her son in his birthday suit [CNET]

Which provides a semi-good segue into this link, wherein a number of privacy groups are hoping to expand the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act‘s scope [Broadcasting and Cable]

In case you aren’t already sick of reading about the Foursquare privacy hole… [Fast Company]

And here’s some more on that Spokeo chicanery [Network World]

How do you like this – woman takes her iPhone in to Apple for an upgrade to iOS4, gets back a phone full of someone else’s pictures and data! GENIUS Bar, indeed… [CNET]

Now, Facebook applications will have to ask your permission before accessing data you’ve designated private…why they didn’t have to do that before is a mystery to all of us [PC World]

So, about that Foursquare privacy hole – apparently the hacker who exposed it was able to “harvest” 70% of all of San Francisco‘s check-ins over the last few weeks…but, oh, it’s fixed now [TechCrunch]

We may or may not have mentioned this survey here before (seems like everyday there’s a new survey about privacy, doesn’t it?), but it seems America’s youth doesn’t care about privacy…you know, because we needed a survey to tell us that… [Blogger News Network]

The Center for Democracy and Technology has filed a privacy complaint against Spokeo.com [PC World]

So, the dude behind Avoidr has apparently also exposed a Foursquare privacy hole [Wired]

Shutterfly reveals that most people are only privately sharing photos…makes sense [MarketWatch]

“Privacy advocates give limited approval for new White House Web 2.0 policies”… [NextGov]

10 foreign privacy commissioners say Google needs to do a better job protecting users data [NY Times]

Detailing real world examples of how oversharing via Foursquare can end badly [LaLaWag]

Gizmodo has some fun with where Facebook’s privacy problems could potentially be headed [Gizmodo]

The one thing that couldn’t happen to Blippy happened, though it was minor and they are now working diligently to make sure it can’t happen in the future [Blippy blog]

Despite Blippy’s unfortunate issue, it’s not losing many users…of course, if those users were able to delete their accounts when they tried on Friday, it might be a different story [TechCrunch]

The internets have had many significant impacts on our society, not the least of which seems to be a slow loosening of our grip on our own privacy. We still guard some of our personal information with a fervor, but we’re much more likely to share information about ourselves and what we’re doing on the web thanks to social platforms like Twitter and Facebook. And most recently, some of us have begun volunteering our locations via the social platform, Foursquare, which prompted some other snarky folks to found PleaseRobMe.com.

It’s not just a clever name. PleaseRobMe is indeed a site that aggregates all check-ins from Foursquare and other location-based services, showing them in a real time feed on the site’s main page (not sure it even has any other pages), which quips, “listing all those empty homes out there.” The idea, obviously, is that because these users are volunteering themselves at a location that is not their home, their home is vacant and ripe for robbery.

I can’t say I don’t get the concept. As a professed cynic myself, I think it’s kind of funny. But in all honesty, if the PleaseRobMe folks mean for their application to be taken any other way than tongue-in-cheek, they’re overreaching. Either way, Foursqure fired back yesterday, reassuring us all that we are indeed safe to use their service. And they made a good point, that Foursquare asks users where they want to share their location every time those users “check in” somewhere. They are free to share that info on Facebook and Twitter, but that’s their choice, AND they have control over who sees their posts on both of those platforms as well. So really, this is a user thing, not a Foursquare thing.

But there are a couple things they might have also mentioned, that I figured I’d posit here for you to ponder.

#1 is, as Gawker pointed out, checking in is absolutely not the only way to let others know when you’re not home. How about when you work from 9 – 5? Or how about when you update your Facebook status when you go on vacation? Maybe you’re uploading mobile photos taken while you’re on vacation, or even just out and about. The point is – there are a number of ways that users are already (and have been for a while) revealing that their home may currently be vacant, outside of Foursquare.

#2 – If someone really wants to rob your house, they obviously know where you live. The easiest way to know if you’re not home isn’t monitoring your Foursquare or your Twitter feed, it’s just to stake out your place and strike when they see you leave.

#3 – Even if you’re checking in from somewhere on Foursquare, that doesn’t mean someone isn’t home at your house. After all, it IS conceivable that people have spouses, children and other family members who live with them, right?

I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

The bottom line really is that using Foursquare itself isn’t going to increase the chances that you’ll lose all of the fun and valuable toys you have in your home.

But there is a message here. Just like with anything you put out there on the wide world of web, you have to be careful who knows what. If your Twitter account is public and you have a bunch of followers that aside from retweeting your pithy Tweets are otherwise strangers, limit your check-in activity.

I personally never send my check-ins to Twitter for that simple reason. I have the option to share them on Facebook, where I only approve friend requests from people I know personally, so I’m comfortable sharing them there, but Twitter, not so much. Yes, the main idea of checking in (besides the promise of badges!) is to let people know where you are so they can potentially meet up with you. But you can just as easily accomplish that on Facebook (where you have much more privacy control) as you can on Twitter.

Just exercise judgment and you’ll be fine.

PS – check out the Gawker link for more tips!

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