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.
That's the kind of data collection I can get behind, because it actually provides direct value to the users providing the data that can only be had through aggregation (though I would hope that we'll someday have a regulatory framework that requires it be thoroughly anonymized).
Targeted advertising and retail foot-traffic analytics for hedge funds, not so much.
Except that Apple manages to do it without violating anyone's privacy. It was detailed in a recent WWDC.
If I remember correctly, instead of tracking a person throughout their journey or the day and using "traffic monitoring" as an excuse, Apple takes anonymized snippets of journeys (around a mile or less IIRC), and uses those.
It seems to me that any company not doing the same is just profiling its users for profit.
I'm so confused by people's response here. It's a location tracking app. I've been using Swarm for almost 10 years for this exact purpose.
My problem is that Foursquare (the company, not the apps) is using location data of people who aren't using location-tracking apps and who haven't given consent to have their location tracked.
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]
What is your source?
If users don't realize that, then they cannot have given real consent. Real consent requires that you know what you're consenting to.