If you have the location services enabled on your iPhone, your exact GPS coordinates are broadcast to a variety of different apps. This has always freaked me out just because of the stereotypical “big-brother” idea, but on Thursday Facebook decided to take things a step further and put the information into the hands of your “friends”.
Ok, so maybe you should delete that psycho ex-girlfriend that you dated in high school 9 years ago, because you guys don’t talk and honestly, she freaks you out. But what about the people that are not so obvious? Luckily, Facebook allows you to change the settings about who you can see and who can see you. Hopefully we can all figure out who to trust with the knowledge of knowing where we are at literally all times.
But what about people we can’t trust? what if we don’t know them at all? “Facebook has also revealed that it plans to share your Nearby Friends data with advertisers.” (Huffington Post) This takes things beyond anything we have imagined with today’s capabilities: Personalized Ad’s based on your likes, sent to you based on your GPS location, and dependent on who you are with or nearby to.
While the capabilities for this software seem cool, taking a deeper look reveals a scarier fact. With an unsecured Facebook network in control of your location at any given time, anyone could be watching you. The government being the obvious first choice, when does the line of amendment rights get crossed? We may never be informed of that. Do your best.
Stray Righteous.
Most Righteous Entertainment 