Facebook alert - edit your privacy settings!

[dreamshark]

Facebook has rolled out another great "feature" - a mechanism for tracking your physical location so you can tell everybody on the Internet where you are at every moment. As far as I can see you cannot opt out of this feature, although you can limit its visibility.  You aren't tracked automatically, only if you login and explicitly post your current location. But there's an interesting back door that may not be obvious. BY DEFAULT your friends can post your location for you!  They can even lie about where you might be, if your friends roll that way.  If you want to disable the feature that lets your friends tell the world where you are, you can do it in the Privacy settings but you have to be fairly persistent to find it.

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Another reason I'm pleased that I changed my "Current City" (and tinkered with my movie/etc prefs). While that's confused some people, it's mainly designed to screw around with FB's metrics. While their ads still target me in Mpls, I suspect "Places" doesn't. But yes, I turned off the option in Privacy Settings that lets my Friends do something with it..

[ann-totusek.livejournal.com]

You can indeed opt out- http://gizmodo.com/5616338/the-first-thing-you-should-do-with-facebook-places-dont-let-other-people-tag-you

[drblkcrab.livejournal.com]

I don't use Facebook since it seems they are always having issues. I don't need the grief!