We've known for years about the uses of Big Data (good and bad), and people still cheerfully fork over mining rights of their life story to third parties to click cows and exchange pictures.
Frankly, link-bait titles and apps like this are the only way the majority of folks are ever going to figure out that, hey, maybe this isn't such a hot idea.
I mean, it will happen sooner or later, same number of violent psychopaths out there as always. The media will love the cyber-stalker angle too, just like Columbine was used to push the Violent Video Games Ruin Children meme.
An app like this makes a better target for public outrage than facebook or another big player too, so they'll probably take the brunt of the 24 hour news cycle outrage. Especially since the big players have a prepared coordinated PR response ready to go already.
(The original title being 'This Creepy App Isn’t Just Stalking Women Without Their Knowledge, It’s A Wake-Up Call About Facebook Privacy')
It's like folks that apply decals with the names of their kids on the back of their SUV's. I've never understood why someone would do something that stupid. In some cases they even go as far as also providing clues as to what they are into. The most common example of this is having the Christian ichthus (fish) symbol under their names.
I struck-up a conversation with one such parents at the local school our kids attend during an open house event. I explained just how much I knew about their kids by making a number of inferences from the very public access they were providing through these seemingly innocent little stickers on the back of the SUV. It wasn't hard at all to demonstrate just how bad an idea this was. They thanked me and went out to the parking lot to remove the stickers right away.
I don't like to think ill of people and I generally don't (and have scars to prove it). This does not mean that one has to provide all the necessary tools and information to facilitate becoming a victim.
[1]This Creepy App Isn’t Just Stalking Women Without Their Knowledge, It’s A Wake-Up Call About Facebook Privacy
It's like a maze covered in mirrors intended to result in accidental oversharing... and in dopamine created in the brains of people who have some minimal curiosity about the individuals whose actions are being revealed and who might click on an ad.
I think it's just a matter of time before people realize this. Sadly, the process will leave Facebook and Google mistrusted (if not hated) by users.
Just as an accidental purchase of a song on iTunes earns Apple a dollar of revenue, the accidental overshare of information (due to confusing privacy policies and settings) earn Facebook and Google lots of ad clicks.
Imagine users dumb enough to think that the $50 in songs they accidentally purchased from the iTunes store due to an intentionally confusing link or button were no big deal, etc. Soon enough users will wise up and realize that these accidental-overshare business models are ultimately dishonest and abuse the trust of users.
EDIT: Sorry, that's an awful sentence.
He calls the people who use this app creeps and stalkers, yet he downloads it, shows it to a table of his friends, then writes about it. Comes off as a completely hypocritical white knight.
He does take a long time to get to the point, but I don't think that he is trying to criticize the app authors, or Apple, he's trying to make a point about how Facebook and FourSquare make it too easy to over share personal information.
If the information is available via public APIs then anyone could write the App, I think the author is trying to point out that people need to be educated about what the possible consequences of their facebook (et. al.) privacy settings are.
Using this app as a vivid demonstration is quite likely far more effective than a technical or ideological rant about privacy.
Wow! He downloaded an app and then showed it to people before writing about it. What exactly is hypocritical about that? I agree that the tone of the article is a little strange and posting photos of the women was unnecessary, but I don't see how downloading an application and showing it to people makes him a hypocrite.
Where did you get the "white knight" business from?
>So I’m writing about it now. Not because Girls Around Me is an evil app that should be pulled from the iOS App Store, or because the company that makes it — Moscow-based i-Free — is filled with villains. I still don’t believe that there’s anything wrong with what this app is doing, and the guys at i-Free are super nice, and certainly don’t mean for this app to be anything beyond a diversion.
If you have read this, then you misunderstood him completely. He very clearly states that the creators of the app are not villains.
There was so little awareness raised outside techie circles by such a perfect demonstration that I've arrived at this particularily depressing opinion of what it will take.
I hope I'm just being pessimistic and not realistic.
In fact, I think it's a good thing that such an app exists. The bad thing is people not knowing what they share, and that needs to be fixed by Facebook/Google, or through laws. The situation is not that much different from exposing a security hole in order to get it fixed. Besides, some people may actually want their data to be available like this, so once it's strictly opt-in, there's nothing wrong with the app.