10 ms·

The Foursquare of today is a location data giant

183 points by AznHisoka 8y ago

AznHisoka 8y ago
“I don't know how people will react to seeing a heat map in real time of where all the phones are. I can imagine some people would be like, ‘That's the coolest thing!’ And I can imagine some people would be like, ‘That's the creepiest thing!’” I don’t think I know anyone that would find that the coolest thing ever. maybe the companies that buy the data, sure.
- tw_hey_boss 8y ago
  Honest question: if the source of the data was anonymous (as in gdpr anonymous, not “we use UUID instead of your name + SSN” anonymous) would you find it cooler? Because we have the tech, but struggling to properly monetize. Throwaway bc not sure if boss is OK with disclosure
  - jsutton 8y ago
    The problem is that given enough data, you can infer the identity of a what would otherwise be an anonymous driver. If you could track an anonymous data point (person) for multiple days, you could find out where the location data was confined to for the longest times (home and work), etc.
    - tw_hey_boss 8y ago
      Yeah, that's the problem we solved. there are a few caveats, but it's precisely why we don't consider UUIDs anonymous
      - JohnFen 8y ago
        How have you solved it? If you really have, then you're in a position to clean up, since nobody else has managed to crack that nut. Your mention of "gdpr anonymous" doesn't really give much reassurance, as you can be GDPR compliant but still expose your users to de-anonymization.
  - floatingatoll 8y ago
    If I’m not being paid cash for my location data, I’m not going to be excited to help Foursquare collect it, whether it's anonymous or not. Paying me in contextually-relevant advertisements and recommendations (cough exposure) will never be enough.
    - tehlike 8y ago
      Would you do it for 10 bucks a year? The companies make money because they have data for a lot of people, your individual location is not worth a lot as a result.
      - AznHisoka 8y ago
        Yes I would. if you offer that to everyone, I doubt you would be profitable though.
      - floatingatoll 8y ago
        No. The flat rate forces them to pay me when they don’t earn revenue and screws me when they earn too much revenue. The content publication industry worked out residuals years ago. They’ll need to do the same to earn my trust, and thus my location data.
        floatingatoll 8y ago
        Heh: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/12/california-gov-newsom-calls-for-new-data-dividend-for-consumers.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/12/california-gov-newsom-calls-...
  - AznHisoka 8y ago
    As another person said, if Foursquare isn’t paying me, I would never find it cool. I am not impressed by data hoarding and creating cool visualizations to distract from foursquare’s true motive: money.
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    > if the source of the data was anonymous (as in gdpr anonymous, not “we use UUID instead of your name + SSN” anonymous) would you find it cooler? I wouldn't, unless I could be convinced that the data was actually anonymized -- and considering that effective anonymization is actually a really hard problem to solve, that's a very high bar. Not to mention that in the end, I'd have to take the company's word for it, which requires a high degree of trust to begin with.
- floatingatoll 8y ago
  It was the coolest thing in the world when Foursquare first launched at SXSW years and years ago. You could see local checkins per-venue somehow so that you could find, or avoid, hot popular places. I'm glad to see they've gotten back to those roots — but I'm also glad I deleted my data when they turned into a data marketer.
  - jak92 8y ago
    > but I'm also glad I deleted my data when they turned into a data marketer. Thanks, I needed a laugh today.
    - floatingatoll 8y ago
      At what?
- robbiemitchell 8y ago
  I think it's cool. I don't care that Foursquare has my location. And I continue to use Swarm because I want a record of where I've been and where I want to go. After watching Long Shot on Netflix, sometimes I'm sort of glad I (and a few other companies) have a corroborated log of where I've been at specific times.
  - mixmastamyk 8y ago
    That's fine when it is under your control. But, it isn't. And companies are using it for their benefit, and will avoid your defense, short of a court order.
    - robbiemitchell 8y ago
      Of course it’s not under my control, it’s on their servers. I don’t mind that they build a location API with the data. Why should this bother me?
      - mixmastamyk 8y ago
        If you think location is the only thing these companies are collecting, you're mistaken. The data is sold to unknown third parties and freely given to dangerous governments. There are any number of bad outcomes possible, though I admit many are not likely. The point is that these folks are not on your team, will never be, and are potentially malicious to you and your family. Why support them?
  - emgee_1 8y ago
    I just watched long shot to understand your comment :) in the Netherlands
  - tenpies 8y ago
    It's cool until a religious politician takes power and slowly starts stacking things against people from other religions and atheists. Your data reveals that you attend the wrong religious building or no building at all. A few years later you get a free train trip to a fun re-education camp.
- jbwinners 8y ago
  Shameless self-promotion, but I made this piece of art out of mobile data to ask that same question: http://bit.ly/gpsgenart http://bit.ly/gpsgenart The image on the gallery site seems to be a photo of a print so here's a higher quality version and a few related images (gallery contract requires the watermarks): http://bit.ly/2H8N9K4 http://bit.ly/2H8N9K4 http://bit.ly/2CauAB5 http://bit.ly/2CauAB5 http://bit.ly/2UsSleJ http://bit.ly/2UsSleJ http://bit.ly/2EZd709 http://bit.ly/2EZd709
minimaxir 8y ago
Foursquare was the best data provider for casual geolocation analysis + visualization and POI data (here's a scraper I had written for it: https://github.com/minimaxir/foursquare-venue-scraper https://github.com/minimaxir/foursquare-venue-scraper), until a April 2018 change neutered both the amount of returned metadata for Personal API clients and the rate limits for those clients. (endpoint documentation: https://developer.foursquare.com/docs/api/endpoints https://developer.foursquare.com/docs/api/endpoints) It's disappointing, and this article is a reminder I need to add a depreciation notice to that repo.
- pantaloons 8y ago
  It's very disappointing. I wrote a fun app for my friends which would find the nearest bar serving picklebacks in New York City on top of Foursquare. These API changes effectively killed it. This is the same company that regularly hosts hackathons and talks about wanting "to inspire young developers to dream up the next generation of amazing products and services, and provide them with the tools to make them a reality."[1] How about if you want to do that, don't take your users data and hold it hostage to developers who want to provide them a free service? [1] https://medium.com/foursquare-direct/foursquare-x-la-hacks-great-minds-build-alike-edcc5f9bda5a https://medium.com/foursquare-direct/foursquare-x-la-hacks-g...
- AznHisoka 8y ago
  Have you considered using the Facebook Places API? https://developers.facebook.com/docs/places/ https://developers.facebook.com/docs/places/
  - freehunter 8y ago
    Facebook Places is good, but don't be any more reliant on it than Foursquare - they deprecate APIs without warning too. I run a local news site and made heavy use of their Events API (public events indexable by Google and visible without signing in to Facebook available to anyone with a browser even today) until they unceremoniously ripped it away without providing any advance notification, a deprecation warning, or even any reason as to why it's gone. I still use the Facebook Places API but I have no doubt it too will disappear without any warning.
jcoffland 8y ago
This hypertrending feature is very similar to how Google Maps tracks traffic. Everyone using Google Maps is constantly uploading position information which makes it possible for Google to infer traffic jams, among other things. Of course, Google has a more plausible argument that it's users have opted in even if very few realize their anonymized and aggregated position information is being broadcast to the world.
- abalone 8y ago
  It's more than that. The article implies that Foursquare is sourcing data from a variety of apps, including apps that are associated with your real world identity and preferences and lifestyle activities, which increases the opportunity for privacy invasions. For comparison when Apple Maps shares your position information it is a strictly anonymous session ID that is not associated with your Apple ID and is regularly discarded.[1] [1] https://www.apple.com/privacy/approach-to-privacy/ https://www.apple.com/privacy/approach-to-privacy/
  - shereadsthenews 8y ago
    Is that really accurate? iOS comes out of the box with "improve Apple Maps" enabled, which collects location data and associates it with your Apple ID and your registered address. They do this even if you've literally never launched their terrible, useless map application that nobody likes. Always seemed pretty underhanded.
    - abalone 8y ago
      > collects location data and associates it with your Apple ID What is your source?
      - shereadsthenews 8y ago
        That's what it says it does under the control to turn it off in the settings.
anthonybsd 8y ago
So a few weeks ago this article circulated here: https://digiday.com/marketing/confessions-location-data-exec/ https://digiday.com/marketing/confessions-location-data-exec... How does that reconcile with usefulness of the data Foursquare collects? Wouldn't that mean that Foursquare location data comes from a very limited subset of mobile users? I feel like I am missing something.
- minimaxir 8y ago
  One trend I've noticed working with Foursquare data is that since anyone can add POI, there are a lot of garbage POIs. A simple filter on the number of check-ins alleviated that issue, but the new API no longer exposes that to anyone besides Enterprise users.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  Wouldn't that mean that Foursquare location data comes from a very limited subset of mobile users? Data companies exist to combine information from multiple limited subsets of users in order to create large datasets of all users that they can then sell.
abalone 8y ago
> Foursquare knows where they are in real time, because it powers many widely used apps, from Twitter, to Uber, to TripAdvisor, to AccuWeather. Holy crap, does Foursquare get your Uber location data and associate it with other services like Twitter? This is starting to sound like a mini-Facebook. Call me cynical but I bet the only reason Crowley is even talking about this now is because they're trying to get ahead of the reckoning that's coming to Facebook for these kinds of data practices. He's positioning 4square as all innocent "hey we dunno if this is cool or creepy, let's ask people.." But is he really? Or is it an effort to appear like they are being transparent? If they really cared they would make it clear what they know about you. But you can bet they won't because nobody wants Foursquare tracking your Uber destinations and associating it with your Twitter profile or anything else.
- h3throw 8y ago
  No. Uber gets location data FROM Foursquare. EDIT: That is, the API call doesn't include info about the individual. Foursquare wouldn't know who the individual is for whom the request was made. Except, perhaps, in rare circumstances where they tried correlating them, themselves. Even then, Uber mostly uses it not to understand where a user is but rather the types of locations at a given address.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - abalone 8y ago
    > No. Uber gets location data FROM Foursquare. This doesn't make sense and contradicts the article. Don't apps have to send coordinates to Foursquare to get location names? Foursquare then holds onto that data and tracks you. Perhaps also matching it to other services with a unified ID. Update to your edit: The article strongly implies that Foursquare has figured out how to associate location data from multiple services into a single view. Apps that use Foursquare are feeding Foursquare very detailed location data about you, even if they're only using it to look up location names. It means Foursquare is getting all your Uber destinations and all your geotagged social media posts. The article literally describes how they've taken this data and turned you into a "card" that tracks your ID across services: He taps on one profile, called “Harry,” and a pie chart pops up that details the habits of the real person associated with that advertising ID. “Harry spends a lot of time in Midtown, sometimes goes to parks, and rides the subway,” Crowley says, looking over the data Foursquare has assembled from the person’s use of popular apps and geotagging services.
companyhen 8y ago
So should I delete the app from my phone?
- JohnFen 8y ago
  I don't think that would help much. If I understand what they're saying, they're getting your location from lots of other apps and sources as well.
  - companyhen 8y ago
    Ah, so delete all the apps from my phone.
    - fhrow4484 8y ago
      You can make sure none of your apps have the Location permission turned on. It won't prevent those apps from using IP address for approximate location, but it would definitely reduce the accuracy.
- princeofwands 8y ago
  Yes. Foursquare sells your location data to other companies. These companies then know: Where you live, where you work, how you commute, if you use drugs, if you drink a lot, if you are gay, if you are religious, your favorite food, an estimate of your income, if you work out, ... Depending on the company and jurisdiction, they can then use this data to decline you their service or place you inside an advertisement bubble. Edit: I do not understand the downvotes on this. You could help me form a better view on this, by replying or stating what is wrong. I am talking Enterprise Access to Foursquare data.
  - colinyoung 8y ago
    > If you use drugs > If you are gay/religious Uh, neither of these can be inferred definitively from location data.
JohnFen 8y ago
This sort of spying is one of the reasons why my mistrust of apps, companies, and smartphones keeps growing.
- Yhippa 8y ago
  I've come to the realization that any app I use unless I'm paying for it directly or lightly indirectly, is sending home as much data as it can about me.
  - rrix2 8y ago
    I've never understood this idea. You might pay for AppX but if they use data provided from LibraryY, nothing outside the privacy policy and license agreement gives you any idea (much less control) Iver what LibraryY does, regardless how much you paid for AppX. Paying isn't enough, you must read and understand these agreements enough to know that most of the time "we partner with certain 3rd parties and your usage of those third party libraries are governed by their license agreement and privacy policies" type wording is all you get besides a big old middle finger.
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    > unless I'm paying for it directly The tendency is that apps are doing this even when you're paying for them directly.
rajacombinator 8y ago
Isn’t foursquare an app people used, like, 10 years ago? Ever seen anyone using it? Do they have a business model?
- JohnFen 8y ago
  I believe that the article itself answers all these questions.
deftturtle 8y ago
We've heard this many times before, but to what end? What does any of this mean in practical terms? What's going to happen? I might be wrong, but nobody I know actually uses Foursquare, and I'm not sure that it offers any tangible value. It seems more people are realizing that location data is a liability these days, and Apple is demanding greater protection for customer data. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14052444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14052444 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10904494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10904494 [3] https://www.wired.com/2016/01/foursquares-plan-to-use-your-data-to-make-money-even-if-you-arent-a-user/ https://www.wired.com/2016/01/foursquares-plan-to-use-your-d...

183 points by AznHisoka 8y ago

“I don't know how people will react to seeing a heat map in real time of where all the phones are. I can imagine some people would be like, ‘That's the coolest thing!’ And I can imagine some people would be like, ‘That's the creepiest thing!’” I don’t think I know anyone that would find that the coolest thing ever. maybe the companies that buy the data, sure.

tw_hey_boss 8y ago
Honest question: if the source of the data was anonymous (as in gdpr anonymous, not “we use UUID instead of your name + SSN” anonymous) would you find it cooler? Because we have the tech, but struggling to properly monetize. Throwaway bc not sure if boss is OK with disclosure
- jsutton 8y ago
  The problem is that given enough data, you can infer the identity of a what would otherwise be an anonymous driver. If you could track an anonymous data point (person) for multiple days, you could find out where the location data was confined to for the longest times (home and work), etc.
  - tw_hey_boss 8y ago
    Yeah, that's the problem we solved. there are a few caveats, but it's precisely why we don't consider UUIDs anonymous
    - JohnFen 8y ago
      How have you solved it? If you really have, then you're in a position to clean up, since nobody else has managed to crack that nut. Your mention of "gdpr anonymous" doesn't really give much reassurance, as you can be GDPR compliant but still expose your users to de-anonymization.
- floatingatoll 8y ago
  If I’m not being paid cash for my location data, I’m not going to be excited to help Foursquare collect it, whether it's anonymous or not. Paying me in contextually-relevant advertisements and recommendations (cough exposure) will never be enough.
  - tehlike 8y ago
    Would you do it for 10 bucks a year? The companies make money because they have data for a lot of people, your individual location is not worth a lot as a result.
    - AznHisoka 8y ago
      Yes I would. if you offer that to everyone, I doubt you would be profitable though.
    - floatingatoll 8y ago
      No. The flat rate forces them to pay me when they don’t earn revenue and screws me when they earn too much revenue. The content publication industry worked out residuals years ago. They’ll need to do the same to earn my trust, and thus my location data.
      - floatingatoll 8y ago
        Heh: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/12/california-gov-newsom-calls-for-new-data-dividend-for-consumers.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/12/california-gov-newsom-calls-...
- AznHisoka 8y ago
  As another person said, if Foursquare isn’t paying me, I would never find it cool. I am not impressed by data hoarding and creating cool visualizations to distract from foursquare’s true motive: money.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  > if the source of the data was anonymous (as in gdpr anonymous, not “we use UUID instead of your name + SSN” anonymous) would you find it cooler? I wouldn't, unless I could be convinced that the data was actually anonymized -- and considering that effective anonymization is actually a really hard problem to solve, that's a very high bar. Not to mention that in the end, I'd have to take the company's word for it, which requires a high degree of trust to begin with.
floatingatoll 8y ago
It was the coolest thing in the world when Foursquare first launched at SXSW years and years ago. You could see local checkins per-venue somehow so that you could find, or avoid, hot popular places. I'm glad to see they've gotten back to those roots — but I'm also glad I deleted my data when they turned into a data marketer.
- jak92 8y ago
  > but I'm also glad I deleted my data when they turned into a data marketer. Thanks, I needed a laugh today.
  - floatingatoll 8y ago
    At what?
robbiemitchell 8y ago
I think it's cool. I don't care that Foursquare has my location. And I continue to use Swarm because I want a record of where I've been and where I want to go. After watching Long Shot on Netflix, sometimes I'm sort of glad I (and a few other companies) have a corroborated log of where I've been at specific times.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  That's fine when it is under your control. But, it isn't. And companies are using it for their benefit, and will avoid your defense, short of a court order.
  - robbiemitchell 8y ago
    Of course it’s not under my control, it’s on their servers. I don’t mind that they build a location API with the data. Why should this bother me?
    - mixmastamyk 8y ago
      If you think location is the only thing these companies are collecting, you're mistaken. The data is sold to unknown third parties and freely given to dangerous governments. There are any number of bad outcomes possible, though I admit many are not likely. The point is that these folks are not on your team, will never be, and are potentially malicious to you and your family. Why support them?
- emgee_1 8y ago
  I just watched long shot to understand your comment :) in the Netherlands
- tenpies 8y ago
  It's cool until a religious politician takes power and slowly starts stacking things against people from other religions and atheists. Your data reveals that you attend the wrong religious building or no building at all. A few years later you get a free train trip to a fun re-education camp.
jbwinners 8y ago
Shameless self-promotion, but I made this piece of art out of mobile data to ask that same question: http://bit.ly/gpsgenart http://bit.ly/gpsgenart The image on the gallery site seems to be a photo of a print so here's a higher quality version and a few related images (gallery contract requires the watermarks): http://bit.ly/2H8N9K4 http://bit.ly/2H8N9K4 http://bit.ly/2CauAB5 http://bit.ly/2CauAB5 http://bit.ly/2UsSleJ http://bit.ly/2UsSleJ http://bit.ly/2EZd709 http://bit.ly/2EZd709

minimaxir 8y ago

Foursquare was the best data provider for casual geolocation analysis + visualization and POI data (here's a scraper I had written for it: https://github.com/minimaxir/foursquare-venue-scraper https://github.com/minimaxir/foursquare-venue-scraper), until a April 2018 change neutered both the amount of returned metadata for Personal API clients and the rate limits for those clients. (endpoint documentation: https://developer.foursquare.com/docs/api/endpoints https://developer.foursquare.com/docs/api/endpoints) It's disappointing, and this article is a reminder I need to add a depreciation notice to that repo.

pantaloons 8y ago
It's very disappointing. I wrote a fun app for my friends which would find the nearest bar serving picklebacks in New York City on top of Foursquare. These API changes effectively killed it. This is the same company that regularly hosts hackathons and talks about wanting "to inspire young developers to dream up the next generation of amazing products and services, and provide them with the tools to make them a reality."[1] How about if you want to do that, don't take your users data and hold it hostage to developers who want to provide them a free service? [1] https://medium.com/foursquare-direct/foursquare-x-la-hacks-great-minds-build-alike-edcc5f9bda5a https://medium.com/foursquare-direct/foursquare-x-la-hacks-g...
AznHisoka 8y ago
Have you considered using the Facebook Places API? https://developers.facebook.com/docs/places/ https://developers.facebook.com/docs/places/
- freehunter 8y ago
  Facebook Places is good, but don't be any more reliant on it than Foursquare - they deprecate APIs without warning too. I run a local news site and made heavy use of their Events API (public events indexable by Google and visible without signing in to Facebook available to anyone with a browser even today) until they unceremoniously ripped it away without providing any advance notification, a deprecation warning, or even any reason as to why it's gone. I still use the Facebook Places API but I have no doubt it too will disappear without any warning.

jcoffland 8y ago

This hypertrending feature is very similar to how Google Maps tracks traffic. Everyone using Google Maps is constantly uploading position information which makes it possible for Google to infer traffic jams, among other things. Of course, Google has a more plausible argument that it's users have opted in even if very few realize their anonymized and aggregated position information is being broadcast to the world.

abalone 8y ago
It's more than that. The article implies that Foursquare is sourcing data from a variety of apps, including apps that are associated with your real world identity and preferences and lifestyle activities, which increases the opportunity for privacy invasions. For comparison when Apple Maps shares your position information it is a strictly anonymous session ID that is not associated with your Apple ID and is regularly discarded.[1] [1] https://www.apple.com/privacy/approach-to-privacy/ https://www.apple.com/privacy/approach-to-privacy/
- shereadsthenews 8y ago
  Is that really accurate? iOS comes out of the box with "improve Apple Maps" enabled, which collects location data and associates it with your Apple ID and your registered address. They do this even if you've literally never launched their terrible, useless map application that nobody likes. Always seemed pretty underhanded.
  - abalone 8y ago
    > collects location data and associates it with your Apple ID What is your source?
    - shereadsthenews 8y ago
      That's what it says it does under the control to turn it off in the settings.

anthonybsd 8y ago

So a few weeks ago this article circulated here: https://digiday.com/marketing/confessions-location-data-exec/ https://digiday.com/marketing/confessions-location-data-exec... How does that reconcile with usefulness of the data Foursquare collects? Wouldn't that mean that Foursquare location data comes from a very limited subset of mobile users? I feel like I am missing something.

minimaxir 8y ago
One trend I've noticed working with Foursquare data is that since anyone can add POI, there are a lot of garbage POIs. A simple filter on the number of check-ins alleviated that issue, but the new API no longer exposes that to anyone besides Enterprise users.
reaperducer 8y ago
Wouldn't that mean that Foursquare location data comes from a very limited subset of mobile users? Data companies exist to combine information from multiple limited subsets of users in order to create large datasets of all users that they can then sell.

abalone 8y ago

> Foursquare knows where they are in real time, because it powers many widely used apps, from Twitter, to Uber, to TripAdvisor, to AccuWeather. Holy crap, does Foursquare get your Uber location data and associate it with other services like Twitter? This is starting to sound like a mini-Facebook. Call me cynical but I bet the only reason Crowley is even talking about this now is because they're trying to get ahead of the reckoning that's coming to Facebook for these kinds of data practices. He's positioning 4square as all innocent "hey we dunno if this is cool or creepy, let's ask people.." But is he really? Or is it an effort to appear like they are being transparent? If they really cared they would make it clear what they know about you. But you can bet they won't because nobody wants Foursquare tracking your Uber destinations and associating it with your Twitter profile or anything else.

h3throw 8y ago
No. Uber gets location data FROM Foursquare. EDIT: That is, the API call doesn't include info about the individual. Foursquare wouldn't know who the individual is for whom the request was made. Except, perhaps, in rare circumstances where they tried correlating them, themselves. Even then, Uber mostly uses it not to understand where a user is but rather the types of locations at a given address.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- abalone 8y ago
  > No. Uber gets location data FROM Foursquare. This doesn't make sense and contradicts the article. Don't apps have to send coordinates to Foursquare to get location names? Foursquare then holds onto that data and tracks you. Perhaps also matching it to other services with a unified ID. Update to your edit: The article strongly implies that Foursquare has figured out how to associate location data from multiple services into a single view. Apps that use Foursquare are feeding Foursquare very detailed location data about you, even if they're only using it to look up location names. It means Foursquare is getting all your Uber destinations and all your geotagged social media posts. The article literally describes how they've taken this data and turned you into a "card" that tracks your ID across services: He taps on one profile, called “Harry,” and a pie chart pops up that details the habits of the real person associated with that advertising ID. “Harry spends a lot of time in Midtown, sometimes goes to parks, and rides the subway,” Crowley says, looking over the data Foursquare has assembled from the person’s use of popular apps and geotagging services.

companyhen 8y ago

So should I delete the app from my phone?

JohnFen 8y ago
I don't think that would help much. If I understand what they're saying, they're getting your location from lots of other apps and sources as well.
- companyhen 8y ago
  Ah, so delete all the apps from my phone.
  - fhrow4484 8y ago
    You can make sure none of your apps have the Location permission turned on. It won't prevent those apps from using IP address for approximate location, but it would definitely reduce the accuracy.
princeofwands 8y ago
Yes. Foursquare sells your location data to other companies. These companies then know: Where you live, where you work, how you commute, if you use drugs, if you drink a lot, if you are gay, if you are religious, your favorite food, an estimate of your income, if you work out, ... Depending on the company and jurisdiction, they can then use this data to decline you their service or place you inside an advertisement bubble. Edit: I do not understand the downvotes on this. You could help me form a better view on this, by replying or stating what is wrong. I am talking Enterprise Access to Foursquare data.
- colinyoung 8y ago
  > If you use drugs > If you are gay/religious Uh, neither of these can be inferred definitively from location data.

JohnFen 8y ago

This sort of spying is one of the reasons why my mistrust of apps, companies, and smartphones keeps growing.

Yhippa 8y ago
I've come to the realization that any app I use unless I'm paying for it directly or lightly indirectly, is sending home as much data as it can about me.
- rrix2 8y ago
  I've never understood this idea. You might pay for AppX but if they use data provided from LibraryY, nothing outside the privacy policy and license agreement gives you any idea (much less control) Iver what LibraryY does, regardless how much you paid for AppX. Paying isn't enough, you must read and understand these agreements enough to know that most of the time "we partner with certain 3rd parties and your usage of those third party libraries are governed by their license agreement and privacy policies" type wording is all you get besides a big old middle finger.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  > unless I'm paying for it directly The tendency is that apps are doing this even when you're paying for them directly.

rajacombinator 8y ago

Isn’t foursquare an app people used, like, 10 years ago? Ever seen anyone using it? Do they have a business model?

JohnFen 8y ago
I believe that the article itself answers all these questions.

deftturtle 8y ago

We've heard this many times before, but to what end? What does any of this mean in practical terms? What's going to happen? I might be wrong, but nobody I know actually uses Foursquare, and I'm not sure that it offers any tangible value. It seems more people are realizing that location data is a liability these days, and Apple is demanding greater protection for customer data. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14052444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14052444 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10904494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10904494 [3] https://www.wired.com/2016/01/foursquares-plan-to-use-your-data-to-make-money-even-if-you-arent-a-user/ https://www.wired.com/2016/01/foursquares-plan-to-use-your-d...