Stomach-turning geo app shamelessly designed to help stalkers prey on "girls"

Nobody is going to take these issues seriously until there is some emotional sting.<p>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.<p>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.

It's a good article, but the title given here is too emotional and link-baity.<p>(The original title being 'This Creepy App Isn’t Just Stalking Women Without Their Knowledge, It’s A Wake-Up Call About Facebook Privacy')

I disagree with the comments indicating that the title is too emotional. I think it needs to be whatever it has to be in order to bring eyeballs to this issue. None-techies have no idea of what is possible when they sign-on to and use various social networks and tools. Because of this they, almost invariably, end-up horribly exposed in very public ways. Articles such as this one need to appeal to emotion and, hopefully, go viral, in order to have non-tech folks understand, protect themselves and their kids.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.

It is a creepy app that exposes folks publicly available data, but I think the idea that it is designed to help stalkers prey on girls is a stretch.

Facebook (and now Google) have adopted the policy of share by default, which makes it not only easy to share things by mistake, but encourages users to be naive about what can be seen by whom.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.

Welcome to the brave new world. You can single out this app but it does not matter - once the data is out there, it's going to be used this way. Most people do not understand participating in social networks means broadcasting your private life to the whole green world. This is a very new thing - you never before had an option to do that even if you wanted. So there are no common sense rules about it, and mothers can't teach their children to behave right on Facebook - because nobody has enough experience with that stuff yet. And unfortunately, I foresee a number of creepy and outright evil things happening before this common sense emerges and becomes part of the collective wisdom. It's much bigger than any single app, that app is only a tiny symptom.

In case you didn't read until the end, Foursquare has terminated the app's API access for violating their venue aggregation policy: <a href="http://www.cultofmac.com/157793/foursquare-kills-api-access-to-creepy-stalking-app-girls-around-me-exclusive/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cultofmac.com/157793/foursquare-kills-api-access-...</a>

Privacy matters will only get worse and worse. At the end of the day, we are actually buying perfect snooping devices (cam, mic, gps) and wearing them 24/7. With our own money. And for the benefit of others, strangers or institutions.

So let me see if this makes sense. This article is talking about how stomach turning and skin crawling Girls Around Me is. To demonstrate this, the author writes a wordy, boring blog post in the style of a short story and posts pictures of the same poor girls that show up in the app without their permission or knowledge, then has the balls to call the creators of the app villains.<p>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.