TMI: Facebook's Mobile Tracking App

Facebook gained attention in 2012 when it acquired Glancee, a mobile app which tracks your whereabouts and allows your friends to locate you. A year later, reports indicate that Facebook has such a mobile tracking app in the works.  The application is designed to bring friends closer together and connect its users with others who have similar interests to them. This type of service, currently offered through similar applications such as Highlight and Banjo, are targeted towards a young, extroverted demographic that seeks “[E]xisting or new pals for drinks, dancing, sipping coffee or sexual hookups.” While the details of Facebook’s app remain to be seen, insiders have revealed that the app will continue to operate even when the application or the smartphone itself is not in use. The release date is rumored to be mid-March. 

Because Facebook’s user base is nearly 1 billion (approximately the third largest country in the world), privacy advocates are concerned about the risks associated with such an application. Girls Around Me, an application that monitored and tracked the check-ins of women through Facebook and Foursquare, was removed from Apple’s App Store after numerous complaints of stalking (though the app did not specifically violate any of Apple’s policies). Is Facebook treading in similar waters?

While there are benefits to such an application (perhaps you could truly forge friendships with those you wouldn’t otherwise meet and the technology permits your loved ones to know you're safe), the privacy concerns are obvious. As Jules Polonetsky of the Future of Privacy Forum puts it, “I totally get that my neighbor knows when I come and go and may even say, ‘We haven’t seen you in a while—is everything OK?’ But if someone else seemed to know about my comings and goings . . . I don’t know.” 

How Facebook implements the tool is critical. Members must be given the opportunity to opt out of the service, not be automatically enrolled. Still, privacy concerns remain. We all know that Facebook (and many other websites) track your browsing history for advertising purposes, but is this taking tracking too far? Proponents of similar location-based applications argue that this is the future of the social networking— translating online experiences into real life experiences. The criticism this app is generating is to be expected says Paul Davison, CEO of a competing service, Highlight. This backlash occurs any time a new technology platform is released. “Most of us look at it and think, ‘That’s weird. That’s creepy and I don’t like it.’ What you normally see is a subset of people saying ‘That is kind of crazy, but I’ll try it out.’ And they see it’s pretty rewarding and fun.”  Polonestsky adds “[C]reepy is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. One person’s creepy is another tech enthusiast’s tool.” 

Maybe I’m being overly cautious. Perhaps this is an aspect of social media the public is prepared to recognize. As Justice Alito noted in U.S. v. Jones “The availability and use of these [social tools] and other new devices will continue to shape the average person’s expectations about privacy and of his or her daily movements.” In any event, such advancements call for heightened self-monitoring and the need to be a savvy social networker.