Comment by danielsht | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danielsht | Hacker News Reader

"Starting today, users who download or update the Foursquare app will automatically let the company track their GPS coordinates any time their phone is powered on. Foursquare previously required users to give the app permission to turn on location-tracking. Now users must change a setting within the app to opt out."

A bit misleading... For users that had Location Services turned enabled for Foursquare (iOS), there is no additional opt in because they have already opted in in the past. But any new users still will get prompted to allow Foursquare to use Location Services. So it is still opt-in. The fact that Foursquare is checking your location periodically is not surprising as it will give the company more data to improve its service...

> The fact that Foursquare is checking your location periodically is not surprising

The fact that Foursquare checks my location when I use the app is not suprising.

The fact that they track my every move, even when the app is not running is absolutely surprising to me, and I bet to the average user as well.

Really? I bet the average user isn't aware of whether the app is "running" at any given time or not, and a not-insignificant subset of users wouldn't know how to find out.

they'd just be annoyed at the battery life of their fancy new phone going down so fast.

For that single reason, I adore Android's "this app ate this much battery" statistics.

And if they're using the 'offline' locations in recommendations, it will dawn on people that the app has been stalking them.

iPhones have a separate processor for that. Not really an issue. It's even better in ios8 with regard to battery life tracking. As for the tracking, it asks for permissions and is fairly obvious what it's doing. Yes, if you avoid reading or doing any level of discovery... If you just blindly install the app without thought, you could claim surprise. I find most people assume far worse than the opposite. Ask for location permissions, and they assume they are getting tracked by someone who is watching them in real time through their phones camera.

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