Facebook Places

02.09.2010

Facebook’s new location service lets your friends know where you are. We show you how to modify your privacy settings.

by Sigrun Landro Thomassen
and Rune H. Rasmussen

The new Facebook service, called Places, enables users to "check in" at locations which will then be shared with their friends and Facebook network. This is done much in the same way as you tag yourself or friends in a photo you upload to the social networking site. While you are sharing your location, you can also tag friends who are in the same place as you, and users will be able to browse schools, shopping malls, coffee shops and other venues to see which friends are nearby. Facebook also lets you see a list of friends and other people who have checked into that same location recently. Users under the age of 18 will only get to see friends.

Facebook Places is a mobile phone application, and in order to use the service you will have to download Facebook's latest application on your iPhone or head to touch.facebook.com on a HTML 5-enabled mobile browser.

The service also works on PCs and Macs, but you can only share your location using a mobile phone. However, you can sit at home in front of a computer and follow where your friends are.

Read more about the service: facebook.com/places

Safety concerns
The new feature is likely to raise concerns over safety, especially due to the fact that it could put individual's security at risk. Facebook executives said they built in privacy controls to protect sensitive location information, such as limiting the default visibility of check-ins to friends only. Users can also turn off the ability for their friends to check them in – but it is permitted by default.

Nicole Ozer, the technology and civil-liberties policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, said "Facebook is rolling out 'here now,' privacy later," noting that the company makes it easy to let strangers know your current location but gives limited ability to control exactly who knows that you are at a place. If a user's "here now" feature is turned on, he or she is visible to any user in that place.

How to change your settings:
Once a user decides to check in at a location, the primary location setting is switched on by default, which means any "places" tags automatically being shared with your friends. But the service does offer a range of protections and controls including the option to detag locations, notifications if friends add your location and the option to disable Places entirely.

If you wish to change your settings for Facebook Places, simply click “Account” at the top of the site, choose “Privacy Settings” and then “Customise settings”. Under the heading “Things I share”, you’ll find “Places I check in to”. Here you can choose to share your location with “everyone”, “friends of friends”, “friends” or “only me”.

If you don’t want to share your location with strangers who have checked into your current location, uncheck the enable button listed next to "Include me in ‘People Here Now' after I check in" – a setting that can be found under the "Things I Share" heading.

Under the heading “Things other share”, you are given the choice to enable or disable “Friends can check me in to places”. Unless you have disabled this option, one of your friends can tag you in a Places post and your location will automatically appear on their wall.

More information
In an article in The Independent, these resources are recommended if you would like to know more about using Facebook Places while ensuring you have the best privacy settings for you:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has put together a user guide that explains some of the different privacy options available:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/08/how-protect-your-privacy-facebook-places

You can read Lifehacker's guide to disabling Facebook Places (and changing your privacy settings) here: http://lifehacker.com/5616395/how-to-disable-facebook-places

This article by CNET will help you edit your Facebook Places settings:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-19518_3-20014097-238.html

Facebook's Who, What, When, and Now...Where blog post:
http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=418175202130

Sources:

Wall Street Journal (European edition)
Facebook Unveils Location Service

Guardian
Facebook Places location tool unveiled, sparking fresh privacy concerns

The Independent
How to use Facebook Places while protecting your private information