If your life’s an open book, beware — Shaun Seow

I think this is a very good article that everyone should take note of.

If your life’s an open book, beware — Shaun Seow

February 23, 2011

FEB 23 — It came a month ago, that straw in the wind.

My Facebook friend was appointed “Mayor” of a local Mexican restaurant. I knew that status meant he was the most “checked in” visitor at the restaurant via the Foursquare app. I did not think much of it then, apart from a mental note to visit.

Then Friend#2 started “checking in” and has been updating, almost obsessively, on where she has been dining.

I get a sense that Friend#2 aka Gourmand will soon be checking into a slimming centre.

I feel I am about to face the whole enchilada, now that Facebook has opened to Singapore’s two million plus accounts its version of “check-in” called Places.

Just this past weekend, the first since Places’ debut, I have been regaled with visits to Sentosa Cove (tai-tai’s weekend home), Shangri-la Hotel’s Line restaurant (last Chinese New Year binge) and Ma Kwang@Middle Road (presumably for acupuncture treatment; another mental note).

To life’s great mysteries, I would add why people “check in” using Foursquare, Places and the like, along with why some (600 million people, including two teens in my household) live their lives like an open book on Facebook, sharing the minutiae of their everyday existence.

Narcissism? Whatever the reason, there must be strong emotional appeal to “check in”. I have heard pragmatic reasons for doing so.

A friend is hoping for chance encounters with people he knows. Another cites peace of mind from regular “check ins” by her young daughter living in London.

A third reason was rather bizarre, at least to me: All the updates go towards a 21st century diary, so that this friend would know exactly where he has been on any day by simply looking at his “check ins”.

To be sure, not everyone has jumped on the “check in” bandwagon. But once mobile coupons are awarded for “check ins” in a big way, the momentum should pick up as it has in the United States and some European countries.

A buck off a Starbucks latte on “check in,” or a free Fajita on your fifth “check in”? Before long, “check ins” could be salsa hot.

It helps that “checking-in” takes just a few taps on a smartphone. Most of these apps will ask you if you allow them to know your location.

Once you click “allow,” you will be able to share your location with friends, find out in real time where your friends are (if they are using the same app), and discover new places in your neighbourhood.

Alas, that much-touted serendipity could be discovering my tai tai friend’s plush home in Tanglin, where she lives with her husband while not on Sentosa. It is a location she has “checked in” before, which will be obvious to those reading her Wall that it was left vacant last weekend.

I hope she knows who her “friends” are — the ones she shares her updates with on Facebook. She may not realise this but her “check ins” could be cyberspace equivalents to walking around Colonia Centro (Mexico City’s most dangerous neighbourhood) in Manolo heels and slinging a Louis Vuitton Avant-Garde Pochette with 20-dollar bills sticking out.

All right. That may have been an exaggeration. She did not totally “open” her empty house to burglars as some early naive Facebook users had done to theirs by putting their postal address on the Wall AND posting “out of town” updates.

Still, never underestimate the will or wiles of those looking for empty homes to burgle.

Consider another scenario: her updates could be an invitation to stalkers or kidnappers. Equally undesirable, no?

Label me fear monger if you will, but I would like to point my tai tai friend to some simple do’s and don’ts when using location based services.

In this regard, I found some useful tips offered recently by Microsoft:

— Never “check in” from home. Also, do not include GPS coordinates in tweets, blogs or social networking accounts.

— Never geo-tag photos of your home.

— Check location privacy settings on phones, social networking sites and online applications.

— Be discerning in who you are adding to your location based service network and keep your location data away from public view.

If all this sounds like good old common sense, that is because it is. If you do not tell a stranger in the real world where you are at any point in time, you should not be doing that in the virtual world.

But staying “safe” is going to be more difficult going forward.

The number of location based services is mushrooming, going beyond Foursquare and Places to include photo sharing tools. And with incentivised “check ins”, sharing your current location can be as addictive as say, tortilla chips.

Here is a mental grenade to end. Even if you do not “check in”, someone sitting in front of a server farm who knows your name, gender and address could still easily track your current location.

Big Brother-creepy? Calm down.

He is someone employed by your local telephone operator, which has orbiting satellites to thank for that capability.

For years, telephone operators have been cautious in exploiting this due to subscribers’ privacy concerns, though that is about to change, as telcos seek to monetise this intimate knowledge through location based mobile advertisements.

Take SingTel for instance, which says on its website that its location-based advertising feature allows advertisers to send targeted ad messages that “can be further personalised according to the time and locations”.

I have not been served a location based ad by SingTel or any telco yet. But I do hope that in the same spirit of “check in” tools, telcos will ask me to opt in to their location based advertising, rather than treat my current location as another data point.

If the latter does indeed happen, I know I shall be telling my operator to take a hike (not my first choice of words but I have to be guided by my editor on what is printable). Or as they say in Mexico, go “freir asparagos” (fry asparagus). — Today

* Shaun Seow is the Deputy CEO of MediaCorp who suspects he will soon be succumbing to “check ins” for free skinny lattes.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication. The Malaysian Insider does not endorse the view unless specified.