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> 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 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
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- 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.
  - secabeen 8y ago
    If you're just using the Foursquare API, they don't. The search API call doesn't require anything more than Lat and Long: https://developer.foursquare.com/docs/api/venues/search https://developer.foursquare.com/docs/api/venues/search However, they also have their Pilgrim SDK, which you incorporate into your app to have constant, passive location data available: > Welcome to the Pilgrim SDK—the always on, passive location detection engine by Foursquare. The Pilgrim SDK provides contextual awareness to mobile applications and connected devices to understand where and how your users are moving through the real world. > By default, Pilgrim SDK runs in the background and pushes you visits when it detects a stop. My guess is that the Pilgrim SDK includes the device Advertising ID in the data it sends back to Foursquare to implement this.
    - bigdubs 8y ago
      > The search API call doesn't require anything more than Lat and Long: https://developer.foursquare.com/docs/api/venues/search https://developer.foursquare.com/docs/api/venues/search That Lat+Long, the implied time of the venue search call, and some type of disambiguation user id is all you'd need to start building a location history for someone.
  - kenneth 8y ago
    Various apps use Foursquare's API to query what is at a specific coordinate. Foursquare knows what queries were made by a unique device. That's it. Not sure why this is so controversial.
    - abalone 8y ago
      Right? All they’d know about you is your home address, where you take Ubers to/from, where you like to eat, shop, places you post from, your habits over time, and anything else they could correlate across the myriad apps that send your precise, unique location to them. NBD.
      - shereadsthenews 8y ago
- kokokokoko 8y ago
  > in rare circumstances where they tried correlating them That is definitely not a rare circumstance. I would be shocked if any data company at reasonable scale was not actively doing that.

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.
- secabeen 8y ago
  If you're just using the Foursquare API, they don't. The search API call doesn't require anything more than Lat and Long: https://developer.foursquare.com/docs/api/venues/search https://developer.foursquare.com/docs/api/venues/search However, they also have their Pilgrim SDK, which you incorporate into your app to have constant, passive location data available: > Welcome to the Pilgrim SDK—the always on, passive location detection engine by Foursquare. The Pilgrim SDK provides contextual awareness to mobile applications and connected devices to understand where and how your users are moving through the real world. > By default, Pilgrim SDK runs in the background and pushes you visits when it detects a stop. My guess is that the Pilgrim SDK includes the device Advertising ID in the data it sends back to Foursquare to implement this.
  - bigdubs 8y ago
    > The search API call doesn't require anything more than Lat and Long: https://developer.foursquare.com/docs/api/venues/search https://developer.foursquare.com/docs/api/venues/search That Lat+Long, the implied time of the venue search call, and some type of disambiguation user id is all you'd need to start building a location history for someone.
- kenneth 8y ago
  Various apps use Foursquare's API to query what is at a specific coordinate. Foursquare knows what queries were made by a unique device. That's it. Not sure why this is so controversial.
  - abalone 8y ago
    Right? All they’d know about you is your home address, where you take Ubers to/from, where you like to eat, shop, places you post from, your habits over time, and anything else they could correlate across the myriad apps that send your precise, unique location to them. NBD.
    - shereadsthenews 8y ago
kokokokoko 8y ago
> in rare circumstances where they tried correlating them That is definitely not a rare circumstance. I would be shocked if any data company at reasonable scale was not actively doing that.