Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I Deleted My Foursquare Account

ariwriter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 39 posts

Re: Why I Deleted My Foursquare Account

#21

Post by ja27 »

The weirdest thing I had happen so far was checking in (on Gowalla) at a restaurant while on vacation and seeing a checkin from the same guy that had also recently checked into our hotel. For a minute I thought it was a weird coincidence, but then I looked at all his recent checkins and he'd been checking into every single spot up and down the beach, about 30 in the past hour. The weird part is that he was actually in the restaurant. I almost said something to him about being an item-hunting scammer, but I let it go.

It's weird how accustomed we've become to anonymity in modern times. Less than a hundred years ago, most people rarely went anywhere without being surrounded by people that knew them. There are still plenty of places where you could go walk into a bar on a Saturday night and 90% of the people know each other.

Re: Why I Deleted My Foursquare Account

#22

Post by pak »

derefr wrote: post #14
jfb wrote: post #3

I've always been skeeved out by the location sharing services; why do I want everybody to know where I am and what I'm doing? Perhaps this is generational (I'm almost 40) as almost everybody I know younger than myself happily checks in via Foursquare or Facebook, but the comment I had upon seeing the initial Loopt demo ("so now my boss can follow me around wherever I go?") retains. It could be generational, or it cou…

I wouldn't derive any particular benefit from FourSquare if I used it, as my movement from place to place is fairly routine and predictable. However, I don't think there would really be any drawbacks if you, me, or anyone else was simply GPS-tagged and stuck in a public-queriable database. Think about this: whenever you go out in public, there are people you don't know all around you watching everything you do, and a…

So you think we should lower the barrier for all discomforting and potentially infringing activities? Your movements today might be fairly routine and predictable, but would you be comfortable in a database flagging every single day where you broke that routine for whatever reason? What if your reasons for doing that were very personal--say you needed to see a therapist, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or a friend in a crisis, etc.

Keeping barriers up for potential mass infringements of privacy may be a good thing. In a digital age, isn't the anonymity of a crowd the only privacy we have left?

That something is possible at great effort is no argument to lower the amount of effort to do it. Do you have locks on your front door?

Re: Why I Deleted My Foursquare Account

#24

Post by jasonlotito »

iamdave wrote: post #9
naz wrote: post #2

Creepy guys will find a reason to awkwardly approach girls with or without Foursquare.

Not really the point here.

Edit: I'd like to preface this by saying that I've never used Foursquare, or any service like this.

Then what is the point? My take away is probably not what it's supposed to be: that people really don't care about privacy until after they've had it violated and then cry about how their privacy has been taken.

I mean, if we take the article for what it says, the weird person is Shea. She's the odd one. She's the strange one. She's sharing her information with strangers, and when a stranger contacts her, she gets scared. I mean, what did he say that was creepy? Nothing. Oh, sure, the situation was creepy. But it was her doing.

She's broadcasting her where-abouts to the world. Someone picks up on that, contacts her, and asks about hanging out. She get's creeped out. He notices and asks. He then advises her not to do what she did.

I'm not heartless. She was frightened. Fine. And the resulting comments seemed excessively harsh. But really, if you're communicating information about yourself to the public, expect communication to actually occur.

Re: Why I Deleted My Foursquare Account

#26

Post by jrockway »

ja27 wrote: post #21

The weirdest thing I had happen so far was checking in (on Gowalla) at a restaurant while on vacation and seeing a checkin from the same guy that had also recently checked into our hotel. For a minute I thought it was a weird coincidence, but then I looked at all his recent checkins and he'd been checking into every single spot up and down the beach, about 30 in the past hour. The weird part is that he was actually i…

I almost said something to him about being an item-hunting scammer, but I let it go.

It's weird how accustomed we've become to anonymity in modern times.

What's really weird is how emotional people get about how other people spend their time. "Scammer" because he's been to 30 restaurants? Who the fuck cares!?

Re: Why I Deleted My Foursquare Account

#27

Post by jrockway »

This is nothing new. Crazy people can be anywhere; they can follow you around, or simply be at your location. The Internet doesn't make this different, it just makes it slightly easier to target a specific individual. But Foursquare, unlike "real life", you can control. You can fake check-ins. You can simply not check in. But when someone is following you around in real life, there is nothing you can do, except maybe get a fake mustache.

Re: Why I Deleted My Foursquare Account

#28

Post by duck »

nmcfarl wrote: post #15
jamiequint wrote: post #12

You could easily solve this issue by just being friends on Foursquare et al with people you actually know and trust.

Well that and unchecking "Show me in the 'Who's here' list in the mobile app" on the settings page.

I don't use it, but it sounds like Facebook regarding default settings are more open than closed... which is great for Foursquare and bad for a general user that never checks that.

Re: Why I Deleted My Foursquare Account

#29

Post by wyclif »

Udo wrote: post #4
jfb wrote: post #3

I've always been skeeved out by the location sharing services; why do I want everybody to know where I am and what I'm doing? Perhaps this is generational (I'm almost 40) as almost everybody I know younger than myself happily checks in via Foursquare or Facebook, but the comment I had upon seeing the initial Loopt demo ("so now my boss can follow me around wherever I go?") retains. It could be generational, or it cou…

I don't believe it's just generational, but culture plays an important role in it. If a person's friends are over-sharers, chances are they themselves might be, too. Personally, I never saw the advantage of location sharing. I like to know what my friends are up to and I like telling them what I'm doing, and there are many tools and sites for doing that. Why do people have to give their geo coordinates to some creepy…

Why do people have to give their geo coordinates to some creepy service when they could just post "hey, i'm at pizza hut, everybody" on Twitter if the need arises?

Because there is more than one Pizza Hut?

Re: Why I Deleted My Foursquare Account

#30

Post by baha_man »

alexknight wrote: post #23

You know what's silly about this story? You can A) Not include your phone number or B) Only friend people that you consider your friend and know personally. Seems like a non-issue to me.

The 'cyberstalker' in the article called the woman on the restaurant's telphone, not her telephone. Also, the default privacy settings on Foursquare allow users who aren't your 'friends' to discover when you've checked in somewhere via the 'mayor' and 'who's here' features.
Post reply on HN