

Why I Deleted My Foursquare Account - ilamont
http://ariwriter.com/why-i-deleted-my-foursquare-account/

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jfb
I've always been skeeved out by the location sharing services; why do I want
everybody to know where I am and what I'm doing? Perhaps this is generational
(I'm almost 40) as almost everybody I know younger than myself happily checks
in via Foursquare or Facebook, but the comment I had upon seeing the initial
Loopt demo ("so now my boss can follow me around wherever I go?") retains.

It could be generational, or it could be incipient crazy-person behavior
(always a possibility with me). I'm not going to try and unpack that myself;
until it causes me drama, I'll just steer clear of anything that broadcasts my
location.

~~~
Udo
I don't believe it's just generational, but culture plays an important role in
it. If a person's friends are over-sharers, chances are they themselves might
be, too.

Personally, I never saw the advantage of location sharing. I like to know what
my friends are up to and I like telling them what I'm doing, and there are
many tools and sites for doing that. Why do people have to give their geo
coordinates to some creepy service when they could just post "hey, i'm at
pizza hut, everybody" on Twitter if the need arises?

~~~
wyclif
_Why do people have to give their geo coordinates to some creepy service when
they could just post "hey, i'm at pizza hut, everybody" on Twitter if the need
arises?_

Because there is more than one Pizza Hut?

~~~
diN0bot
actually that is a benefit. your friends know which Pizza Hut you are
referring to. no one else necessarily knows what country/state/city you're in
(this may be pieceable together from other things you say, but that's quite
different than easy lng/lat)

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liedra
This is the exact reason I never even opened an account.

It's super creepy (I'm a just-turned-30 y.o. woman and have dealt with these
sorts of creepy people even without foursquare). People who need to know where
I am know where I am, or know how to find out where I am. I never understood
the appeal.

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sp4rki
I haven't wont ever create an account. I'm 25 and as eager to jump on the next
cool thing as the next guy, but I just cant fathom how this would be of any
use for me. Why would I want people to know where I am? If I wanted to meet
with friends I can just send them a group/broadcast message and ask who wants
to meet up. I can choose whom I want to meet up with and who I don't want to
provide my current location to that easy. I enjoy social media and sharing to
an extent, but this type of sharing just leads to creepy situations like the
ones in the the article.

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naz
Creepy guys will find a reason to awkwardly approach girls with or without
Foursquare.

~~~
iamdave
Not really the point here.

~~~
jasonlotito
Edit: I'd like to preface this by saying that I've never used Foursquare, or
any service like this.

Then what is the point? My take away is probably not what it's supposed to be:
that people really don't care about privacy until after they've had it
violated and then cry about how their privacy has been taken.

I mean, if we take the article for what it says, the weird person is Shea.
She's the odd one. She's the strange one. She's sharing her information with
strangers, and when a stranger contacts her, she gets scared. I mean, what did
he say that was creepy? Nothing. Oh, sure, the situation was creepy. But it
was her doing.

She's broadcasting her where-abouts to the world. Someone picks up on that,
contacts her, and asks about hanging out. She get's creeped out. He notices
and asks. He then advises her not to do what she did.

I'm not heartless. She was frightened. Fine. And the resulting comments seemed
excessively harsh. But really, if you're communicating information about
yourself to the public, expect communication to actually occur.

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jonhendry
I never really saw the point. I suppose if you have a high friend density in
your location, it might be more useful. On a college campus, for instance.

If your friends and coworkers are widely scattered through several towns, so
even if you post your location nobody's likely to be nearby, then it's really
kinda pointless.

It seems like this would be a good candidate for a peer-to-peer
implementation. Send the data directly to your friends' devices, without a
central repository or way for other people to check.

Of course, then you probably lose many of the marketing possibilities.

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evoltix
I created an account because all my friends were doing it. However, I always
felt deep down that it was weird and potentially dangerous sharing your
location with the rest of the world. After reading this article I asked
myself, "Do I care where my friends are? Do I want to share my location with
others?" I answered "NO" to both questions and deleted my account.

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jamiequint
You could easily solve this issue by just being friends on Foursquare et al
with people you actually know and trust.

~~~
nmcfarl
Well that and unchecking "Show me in the 'Who's here' list in the mobile app"
on the settings page.

~~~
duck
I don't use it, but it sounds like Facebook regarding default settings are
more open than closed... which is great for Foursquare and bad for a general
user that never checks that.

~~~
harryh
I won't speak for facebook but we REALLY DO spend a lot of time thinking about
our privacy settings on foursquare, and we try very hard to balance a "as
secure as possibly by default" vs a "as useful as possible by default" model
while at the same time trying to make the options as easy to understand as
possible for our users. If there's any specific way you think we might be able
to improve I'd be very interested in hearing it.

-harryh, foursquare

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jawngee
I deleted mine as well after a similarly creepy event.

Also, after awhile, I just didn't see the point to it.

~~~
budu3
Care to elaborate?

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qq66
The real question is why any of these people signed up for Foursquare in the
first place. Foursquare is great for people who want to share their location,
not so great (surprise!) for people who don't. If you don't want the risks and
benefits together, don't sign up.

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jrockway
This is nothing new. Crazy people can be anywhere; they can follow you around,
or simply be at your location. The Internet doesn't make this different, it
just makes it slightly easier to target a specific individual. But Foursquare,
unlike "real life", you can control. You can fake check-ins. You can simply
not check in. But when someone is following you around in real life, there is
nothing you can do, except maybe get a fake mustache.

~~~
supershazwi
Probably the fake mustache won't work either cos you'd be telling all your
friends that you got a fake mustache! And we're back to square 1.

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supershazwi
Are this the same with other services like Gowalla? Cos anyone can make the
jump from Foursquare easily.

Both services can post to Facebook anyways, so if it's for the same reason of
telling people where you are, why are people still sticking on Foursquare?

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ja27
The weirdest thing I had happen so far was checking in (on Gowalla) at a
restaurant while on vacation and seeing a checkin from the same guy that had
also recently checked into our hotel. For a minute I thought it was a weird
coincidence, but then I looked at all his recent checkins and he'd been
checking into every single spot up and down the beach, about 30 in the past
hour. The weird part is that he was actually in the restaurant. I almost said
something to him about being an item-hunting scammer, but I let it go.

It's weird how accustomed we've become to anonymity in modern times. Less than
a hundred years ago, most people rarely went anywhere without being surrounded
by people that knew them. There are still plenty of places where you could go
walk into a bar on a Saturday night and 90% of the people know each other.

~~~
jrockway
_I almost said something to him about being an item-hunting scammer, but I let
it go.

It's weird how accustomed we've become to anonymity in modern times._

What's really weird is how emotional people get about how other people spend
their time. "Scammer" because he's been to 30 restaurants? Who the fuck
cares!?

~~~
ja27
I didn't get all emotional about a guy gaming Gowalla. I wasn't about to go
drop an f-bomb on him and his family, but I did come close to joking with him
about it.

I was just commenting that it was weird to actually see a guy that does
hundreds of driveby automated checkins a day actually inside the place he
checked into.

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mkempner
Foursquare comes out of the idea of playing virtual games out in the every day
world. What happens often when people are playing a game is someone gets hurt
and then the fun is ruined for everyone.

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alexknight
You know what's silly about this story? You can A) Not include your phone
number or B) Only friend people that you consider your friend and know
personally. Seems like a non-issue to me.

~~~
baha_man
The 'cyberstalker' in the article called the woman on the restaurant's
telphone, not her telephone. Also, the default privacy settings on Foursquare
allow users who aren't your 'friends' to discover when you've checked in
somewhere via the 'mayor' and 'who's here' features.

