Where Am I? None of Your Business...
Posted by: Scott Koegler in privacy, maps, google, fireeagle, family, brightkite on
Feb 4, 2009
When friends and family tell me they are uncomfortable posting photos of their children online, I'm usually the one saying "What's the big deal?" The kids are probably much better at advertising themselves on the various social nets than anyone can possibly imagine. But this combination of things hit me today, and I wonder if I've been wrong, or if my paranoiac tendencies are just now surfacing. You tell me...
I was driving home from the local YMCA, following a minivan down the road, and noticed one of those cute sets of "My Family" stickers on the back window. "How sweet," I thought to myself. There was Mom, Dad, 2 girls, 1 boy, and 2 dogs. As we pulled up to the stoplight, I saw Mom, 1 girl, and 1 boy in the car.
My lightning brain quickly picked up on the fact that girl #2 was not in the car. And the fact that schools are closed today because of bad weather made me wonder where girl #2 was. OK - so that's as far as my inquiry went. I'm not really interested in finding out. But certainly there are people at least as smart as I, and with much more nefarious intent. And this kind of publication goes on across the country (maybe the world).
Returning home, I checked my news updates only to find this announcement from the Washingtonpost.com describing how Google Maps can display the location of anyone running their "Latitude" service on their cell phone. To be sure, services including Yahoo's FireEagle and BrightKite can already do a good job broadcasting your position, so this is just one more way to let the world know where you are. But Google's reach, and the pervasiveness of cell phones brings us closer to having the ability to find someone we might be interested in finding.
Like all technology, and tools in general, any of these can be used for good or bad outcomes. My point here is that the availability of utilities coupled with our inherent desire to connect to people, should be engaged with informed understanding of both the intended and unintended uses of the actions we take. But I guess that goes for more than just this small example.
