Here & There Column 1-4-11

Do You Like Your Privacy?

As we wish all a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year we also offer some concern in the year 2011 about our whereabouts and offer the question do folks actually give a hoot about their privacy and location awareness.
In this era of social networking it has become very difficult to keep your location to yourself.
Now with the use of Facebook and Foursquare their are features that allows us to check in online and announce our location.........are we showing any concern about this?....and as far as using your iPhone as a GPS devise its being suggested that you use a dedicated GPS devise for navigation help and not a mobile phone with built-in mapping services.
Location privacy issues are beginning to become major concerns and are presenting many problems. Last winter another website began posting people's whereabouts on the Internet which dispersed information that allowed anyone to see when folks were not at home.
The global positioning systems and Wi-Fi capabilities installed in many cell phones also tend to be a big risk.
Folks just seem to like the idea of informing others what they are doing, where they are going, what they are buying etc. etc. and many times there just is too much information being put out there and many just do not gets what all this means.
Now if you wonder if we use Facebook I do have to admit that I use it mainly to get the word out on my Web site and our Bowling, Golfing and Here & There columns and what we are writing about and pictures we are taking but I refuse to use to announce when I'm going out to dinner and where I'm going to be at 8 p.m. tonight........info like that produces a big privacy risk and information the real world does not need to know.
Folks will just have to learn that there are privacy issues involved and that they should understand the extent that their location information is being shared.
Have fun with these many Internet social websites but privacy should become a priority.