Odd that whoever wrote the headline decided to directly contradict the author's conclusion at the bottom: this isn't anything new.
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.
It's not only about where you are, it's also about where you are not at any given time.
You might not see any movement in a house... but maybe there's a bouncer asleep in there after working all night.
Much better to see that the family announced they were spending the day at the beach.
I'm less concerned about burglary than I am about big business.
I wonder how long before we start hearing stories like "My health insurance just went up 300% - when I asked why, they said I visit bars on average twice a week, I eat out at higher than average rates at restaurants ranked on the high side of increasing heart risk, I routinely travel at walking pace through high-crime areas, and I've attended 13 events at which illegal drug use has been reported."
It's your location + all the other public information I can potentially find out about you combined with your location. The combination of a lot of separate facts can, together, potentially make people open to risks that aren't immediately obvious.
For example consider what location from foursquare + sexual orientation from facebook + photo from twitter would give to the scum who gay bash. The combination of religion + location + face is another thing some folk wouldn't want to be public.
I hate to think what the National Front would have done with a "gays, muslims & jews near me" app...
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.
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.
How does your public identity being tied to your "real self" helps you if some random person decides to break into your house? How would you feel if people you don't even know started shouting "Happy Birthday" to you on your birthday? How would you feel if those same people started talking about those genital warts you had to treat two years ago?
People will be comfortable sharing anything (identities, actions, personality traits) as long as they feel they have control over who gets access to what is being shared. I fail to see how anyone would feel comfortable sharing everything to everyone.
All I'm trying to say is that I don't see how to reconcile the idea of having a "public lifestyle" (i.e, let personal information be freely available to anyone that bothers to go look for it) and being able to have a controlled disclosure of personal data.
You raised concerns over someone breaking into my house. I believe we want to stay away from the "you should be afraid of people" argument.
So I suppose your concern is that I would rather some information I leak out remain private. Sure. So what? Then you have to worry about things that you wouldn't want an acquaintance at a party to know. What are those things, how would they get online, how often, and what would the impact be? It's better just not to worry in my opinion, instead of running around putting out fires when a friend of yours on Facebook or Twitter publicly posts that it's your birthday.
But the whole point about the OP that started this discussion of ours was not about information that people are comfortable to share with people they trust. It's about how people not realizing about the information leaking to people they don't know. You seem to dismiss that with the idea that it's a false sense of security. We could argue about that, but it's besides the point.
What I wanted to point out is that it's not just about security. It's about trust. And trust does not with blacklisting post-facto. It works by whitelisting prior known people. The people who got surprised by discovering they were visible on some creepy website had to learn that the hard way.
You could even try to reconstruct foursquare locations of people who are not on FS just by their FB buddies ... try to explain that to "normal people".
And isn't it a bit scary that you seem to need more and more caution as time goes by? Would we need more responsibility on the side of the makers or do we keep blaming "normal people" for the world we create? (like we do it with, let's say, their inability to maintain secure passwords?)
This app just shows what we've known, or should have known (...)
[1]: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/10/firesheep.html
[2]: http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/14/technology/firesheep_starbuc...
Isn't this an example that "we" are not over warning people?
Warning people is more preventative than showing people what they've already got themselves into.