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The Girls Around Me App Takes Creepy to a New Level
- sp332 15y agoThis app just shows what we've known, or should have known, about Facebook and Foursquare. When you check in, people know where you are! and every public piece of data on Facebook is available to every frat rat and creepy stalker on the planet. Somehow the author realized that "normal" people don't think about it that way. The article isn't news so much as a PSA. Odd that whoever wrote the headline decided to directly contradict the author's conclusion at the bottom: this isn't anything new.
- rvcamo 15y agoI agree. I mean this is the reason I don't use Foursquare. Why on earth would I tell the entire Internet where I am and where I've been....
- samstave 15y agoLooks like you just might have something to hide.
- hack_edu 15y agoOr just doesn't want to share yet-more data to a marketing company.
- olliesaunders 15y agoPeople don’t think about privacy issues because our psychology doesn’t trigger much emotion for autonomous opt-in broadcast to people not currently visible. There’s no sense of violation. It’s very easy to forget about it and it starts to feel normal. In a way it’s also empowering to be so open; it makes you feel like you’re not afraid of anything. If you actually step through what is happening when you use these apps (all the individual people you are informing of where you are and have been, your habits, preferences—a complete digital record) you might start to see some risks. Then ask yourself, even if it was easy, would you go round handing out that data on paper to large groups of contacts indiscriminately on a regular basis indefinitely? That’s what’s actually happening here. Now remember there are people (trolls) who get a kick out of being able to do things to do from a safe distance for no reason at all. There are also people closer to you who have fragile egos or maybe you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Using something like Foursquare is giving these people ammunition. The fantasy we like to believe is that everyone we know is trustworthy. The reality is not so rosy.
- jes5199 15y agoWhy wouldn't I tell the internet where I am? It's not really a compromising piece of information. (For example: Right now I'm in an office building at 5th and Mission, in San Francisco!) I know that some people have a safety need to stay more hidden than I do, and we should continue to make it possible for them to stay unmapped. But for the average person: I don't think their physical location is that significant or dangerous.
- nownow 15y agoI agree. Broadcasting your location is only dangerous if you are in a potential position of danger. The fact that you are at work in a secure office building (presumably at Square) means you are probably not in a position of danger. Also, you probably don't worry about being followed home from work. If a young woman were broadcasting which shortcut down the alley she tends to take on her way home from work, one might argue that is a different story. You are not vulnerable at your location; some people might accidentally publish a trend of vulnerable locations.
- j4b 15y agoBroadcasting your location also broadcasts where you aren't. I'm shocked there haven't been more news stories (or scare stories) about people being burglarized based on checkins.
- cstejerean 15y agoMost people aren't at home during regular working hours. That might be why most burglaries occur during daytime hours when nobody is at home. No location sharing necessary.
- toyg 15y agoMaybe because tracking down the address for a Jesse W. in SanFrancisco isn't that hard (you just need the right website), and after that... Somebody already pointed out that a "Burglar Me Please" app would be banal to write: you just walk along SF, and the app will tell you which owner is home and which is away, and how far s/he is; correlate with Facebook (is he married? is he so young he might be sharing his flat?) and you get a list of easy targets in the area. It's not only about where you are, it's also about where you are not at any given time.
- Zirro 15y ago"Somehow the author realized that "normal" people don't think about it that way." Could someone with a bit more understanding of "normal" people explain why this is? There are many cases where people seem to throw caution out of the window just because they're on the Internet. It doesn't make sense to me.
- dwc 15y agoNormal people are used to having the luxury of being very open about almost every facet of their lives and not having to worry about it biting them. The privacy paranoids have largely been, well, paranoid. This has been changing over the past decade or so, but most people still don't believe it. Not really. Apps like this will change public perception, and have a backlash against permissive default privacy policies. At least I hope so.
- ttt_ 15y agoBig data and user profiling is a somewhat recent trend, if you consider the age of the internet. It used to be that free web services merely showed you ads, and people got used to that. I don't think most of them have realized just by what order of magnitude things have escalated, how much information they are making public outside the immediate app and connected friends and how they have become a product for these enterprises to sell.
- ahelwer 15y agoThe concept of a public lifestyle does exist, and I'd say it's a good sign that people do not live in constant fear of their neighbours.
- rglullis 15y agoThe thing is, this is the Internet. Everyone is your neighbor. And you raise a false dichotomy. Just because someone wants to exercise their right to privacy does not imply one is in "constant fear" of others.
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- bproper 15y agoTotally agree. This app shows you people who made public checkins on foursquare and then connects you to whatever profile they display publicly on Facebook. This is yellow journalism. Let's focus on real privacy violations.
- burgerbrain 15y agoDo victims of this feel like they had their privacy violated? If yes (and I strongly suspect the answer you will receive in a non-trivial number of cases is yes), than this is as real a privacy violation as they get.
- kmfrk 15y agoThis app just shows what we've known, or should have known (...) Exactly. I liken this app to Firesheep[1][2] for social and privacy (The Girls Around Me : Privacy :: Firesheep : Security). We're over warning people about the dangers of data leakages; now it's time to show them the consequences and scare them to consider whether it's worth the trade-off. Moving from telling to showing. [1]: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/10/firesheep.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/10/firesheep.html [2]: http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/14/technology/firesheep_starbucks/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/14/technology/firesheep_starbuc...
- dfc 15y ago"We're over warning people about the dangers of data leakages;" ??? Isn't this an example that "we" are not over warning people?
- rory096 15y agoI don't think kmfrk is saying that the warnings are unjustified, more that they're just not getting through due to oversaturation. People hear about privacy issues all the time, but rarely see or experience actual negative repercussions, so they begin to tune out the warnings. Apps like this are excellent demonstrations of the hazards of tossing out personal information willy-nilly, and are thus more likely to actually get the message across to people.
- kmfrk 15y agoExactly. First the warnings didn't work, and now people are desensitized to the debate, so an alternative to just telling people is necessary. Warning people is more preventative than showing people what they've already got themselves into.
- jshintaku 15y agoIsn't it also sexist? And by default cutting out a large sector of the market...
- kaybe 15y agoYou can also make it search for guys. But you're right, the default (as also given in the name) is women. (It says so in the article.)
- jshintaku 15y agoI wonder if someone has ever tried to quantify the bump you get from a "shock value" strategy for an app like this i.e increased press and people talking about your app. I would like to see it measured against taking a more general approach such as what the Sonar app did. I wonder if the gain in customers from a more measured marketing pitch would outweigh the increased chatter you get from something as blunt as "girls around me". Any thoughts? Does the old adage any publicity is good publicity still apply in the digital world?
- rbanffy 15y agoI never met a girl who would seriously use an app like this. And I have met my share of crazy stalkers.
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- quellhorst 15y agoThat is because hot girls are constantly hit on by guys.
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- ionforce 15y agoIf you are the one to search for guys online, you probably are part of a self-selecting group and you already know what the answer for that is. But I agree, it's sexist. We should all have the opportunity to be creeped on.
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- dfc 15y agoHow does this violate 4square's ToS? And how do you distinguish between this app and "legitimate" apps.
- jeltz 15y agoIt made bad press for 4square. I bet that is the only difference between this and legitimate users.
- jes5199 15y agoI read the policy - https://foursquare.com/legal/api/platformpolicy https://foursquare.com/legal/api/platformpolicy and I can't figure out the objection. Plus, all of the information mentioned in the article (who's at location A? what's their facebook profile?) is visible on foursquare.com !
- dfc 15y agoI checked it too and could not find anything. I also looked at the individual ToS and wonder if incorporating the "house rules" has anything to do with it...
- ojbyrne 15y ago"Foursquare may revoke your authentication credentials at any time, for any reason or no reason, with or without notice, and without liability to you or any other person" Sort of ... if you follow every single one of our rules to the letter, we still reserve the right to revoke your access because we just don't like you.
- dfc 15y agoThat is a revocation of the license, not a violation of any terms of the agreement(s) with foursquare.
- akdotcom_ 15y agoHey dfc, We have a policy against aggregating herenow information across venues using our API, to use like this. You can see it clearly stated here in the description for the endpoint: https://developer.foursquare.com/docs/venues/herenow https://developer.foursquare.com/docs/venues/herenow We also prohibit using our API in any manner that is threatening, invasive of another's privacy, or otherwise inappropriate. As mentioned in another reply, we do also reserve the right to revoke access to our API for any reason, at our sole discretion. That being said, we aim to be consistent and transparent in our policies and how we enforce them. Cheers, ~ak, platform evangelist @ foursquare
- daenz 15y agoIf only it wasn't a TOS violation of Foursquare and/or Facebook's API, then maybe people might actually care about their privacy.
- tryke 15y agoMy priorities must be backwards. I'm almost as appalled that the app comes with an "Energy" meter that is fueled by 99-cent in-app purchases.
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- qq66 15y agoThat app just found the most female-biased venues, and said something like "Joe's Bar has 62% females." This finds specific people and links to their Facebook profiles.
- rbanffy 15y agoThe Sex Offender Association is calling them "App of the Year" The next version will correlate profiles from different networks using face-recognition and offer insights on usual itineraries based not only in geotagging of posts but also picture background analysis. This app is a very bad idea. Note to downvoters: if you disagree with this assessment, by all means, say why.
- Dylan16807 15y agoI didn't feel the need to downvote you but I think the reason is pretty clear. You're making an unhelpful and not very clever joke, and then making up a future 'version' of the app for no discernible reason.
- rbanffy 15y agoI think the idea was to highlight the most obvious use for apps like this. The very idea of how easily one could be made by connecting easily available information such as Foursquare checkins, Facebook profiles, tweets, Instagram photos, all neatly tagged with addresses and geographic coordinates allows anyone with such disturbing inclinations to piece together a fairly accurate picture of whoever they want. This app offers a nice menu of easy targets.
- klausa 15y agoHow is this techically possible? I was under impression that foursquare doesn't share your full public profile (including your twitter and/or facebook) when you show up in 'x is also here:'. I get it how it can look up girls that are nearby (scan for nearby 4sq venues, than if there are people in them, filter for girls...), but how can it link back to Facebook (unless you're friends with that person on 4sq and/or facebook, which makes whole point of this app moot)?
- newman314 15y agoGiven 2 public social graphs (FB and 4sq), I'm sure it is not hard of an exercise to cross reference that information. It really is more of a data-mapping exercise using 2 APIs. That's why freely adding lots of personal information is a bad idea. Much as there are tools like 1Password for passwords, I think there should be like tools for usernames/emails. This would then return some control back to the user.
- klausa 15y agoBut how would you cross reference it? From my usage of 4sq (which is limited, I only installed it maybe week ago.), when you check in to venue, and someone else is already there, you get "There are 3 persons already there!", with their avatars. You can tap on those avatars, and see some more info (John D., maybe some bio? I'm not sure, I do know that it doesn't give you their full name.), but I don't think that would be enough to cross match those. That's why I'm curious.
- newman314 15y agoWell, that's part of their secret sauce right? =) Off the top of my head, I'd say go look at the APIs for both FB and 4sq (try say user, friends, checkins, mayorship and location) and look at what is available for user PII and friends. Compare say username and do a little fuzzy matching on friend's names. If say FB and 4sq share say more than x common friends, chances are you have the right mapping and you can build from that. Thrown in a Bayesian filter and pretty soon you will have a good model built up. Think of the 2 APIs as two sheets of paper with directed graphs on them. If you overlay them, the mapping becomes clear pretty quickly.
- newman314 15y agoMaybe this will finally be a wakeup call to privacy. Too many people do not take this stuff seriously and I'm now convinced that people may only start to do something about it when they start experiencing fear over this. Hopefully, awareness over privacy will one day be taken with the same seriousness as "Don't touch that fire, it will burn you".
- suyash 15y agocreepy but solving a real problem, easier to find the women you wanna meet around :P
- eugenejen 15y agoSign, maybe it is better apologize later than asking for permissions first. My company hotlist.com was thinking about similar User Interface as "Grils Around Me" for Hotlist.com on 2008, but we think it was too creepy for users to accept it. Even we just show your acquaintances from Facebook and people already feel uncomfortable about being followed implicitly and we spend a lot of efforts listening to users in user testings to make them feel comfortable. Well, if you like to see where to go and see what kind of crowd in the location, you can come to check hotlist.com out. And if you like it and have suggestions, please do send us feedback. Thank you so much.
- jsm386 15y agoArticle was recently updated: After publication of this article, Laura Covington, a Foursquare spokeswoman, said in statement: “This is a violation of our API policy, so we’ve reached out to the developer and shut off their API access.”
- rdtsc 15y ago> we’ve reached out to the developer and shut off their API access That's sounds so ... I don't know ... PR-ish and passive aggressive. I always thought "to reach out" means an attempt to help. In other words the one reaching out has good intentions and intends to help the other party. So in this instance, it is like saying "the police reached out to the family, killed their dog and arrested everyone".
- Joeboy 15y agoIt's absolutely PR-ish, and it's a bit annoying that the update could leave the naive reader with the impression that everything's been fixed when actually what's happened is that the visibility of the problem has been removed. So far I've only once been threatened with being "reached out" to, by Oracle after I tried to ask them about one of their products. I found the expression vaguely sinister and was kind of relieved that they never actually got in touch.
- zerostar07 15y agoCurious to find out in which way this app was breaking their API policy.
- kill_all_humans 15y agoHow is it "creepy" to know the public information about the people around you? Because women need to be protected from men? I think the sexist idea here is that men are "creeps", and nothing more. As a man, I can approach/stalk any woman, anywhere, anytime, or vice versa. Nobody needs an app to do it, so doing it with this app is not any more "creepy" than it was without the app.
- ericd 15y agoWhelp, here comes privacy regulation. We were skating a fine line for a while, but I think these guys might have just pushed it into a very concrete, scary-for-normal-people-and-their-legislators territory.
- quellhorst 15y agoThe female version of this app would be the sugar daddy locator app. Where annual income is tied to Foursquare checkins.
- Kevin_Marks 15y agoNew app "Nerds Around Me" lets you stalk via Google+ checkins
- cbp 15y agoPeople wont learn till kidnappings start happening.
- falling 15y agoNon creepy version? http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/where-the-ladies-at/id415602400?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/where-the-ladies-at/id4156024...
- sanxiyn 15y agoThis reminded me of a scene from Greg Egan's SF novel, Zendegi. http://gareth-rees.livejournal.com/31182.html http://gareth-rees.livejournal.com/31182.html You know AcTrack? It's a reality-mining plug-in that learns about academic networking using physical proximity, along with email and calling patterns. Last semester we put it on everyone's phones. All right, so I'm running AcTrack. Is everyone else who's running AcTrack appearing on Google Maps? No, but you know Tinkle? It's a new femtoblogging service going through a beta trial. Like microblogging, only snappier. It tells everyone in your network where you are and how you're feeling, once a minute. But why am I running it at all, and why is it telling complete strangers where I am? Oh, I doubt you're actually running a Tinkle client. But on the server side, AcTrack and Tinkle are both application layers that run on a lower-level platform called Murmur. It's possible that there's been some glitch with Murmur -- maybe a server crash that was improperly recovered and ended up corrupting some files. Tinkle does hook into Google Maps, and though it shouldn't be putting anyone on the public database, if you don't belong to any Tinkle Clan it might have inadvertently defaulted you to public.
- joshfraser 15y agoPublic is public. I just assume that any public data I have will be indexed, correlated, searched and used for all sorts of things I didn't intend.
- yaix 15y agoHow is /that/ suddenly "creepy"? I find it creepy that people upload their complete lifes onto Facebook and agree to be stalked 24/7 by Foursquare et al, even actively "checking in" (never understood what for) to publicly broadcast every movement they make.
- ballard 15y agoLet's make lemonade: Busy singles would pay $3.99 (or $1.99 with ads) for an iOS app which automates discovering digital dirt. In-app purchases of background checks would be something to test the market.
- J3L2404 15y agoThe In-App purchase to recharge the service is frightfully ingenious.