Foursquare gives homes more privacy
Adding your home on foursquare has always been a dicey proposition in terms of privacy. Once you became mayor it showed on your profile with a pin pointing directly to it. If you added the address, it showed up right there on the page, making it easy for anyone to find exactly where you lived. Even if you took the trouble to create the location away from your home, it was still easily found by superusers since they could just track the pattern of checkins based on the blue dots.
Late last week foursquare quietly rolled out a change that makes your home much more private — as long as it’s properly categorized. Once categorized as a home, venues now show a message that says:
Since this is a home, the exact location is not shared here. This map is of the approximate area.
The map pin disappears and the map is centered on a random spot at least one-quarter mile away from the actual location so it’s no longer easy to tell exactly where the house is. The street address is hidden, with only the city, state and zip visible. Even the superuser loophole has been closed; blue checkin dots no longer show up for superusers.
Venue owners and their friends can still see the address and correct pin location when logged in. Users who find that their home is on foursquare but isn’t categorized properly can use the new “Report a Problem” link to report it to foursquare staff and get it categorized properly.
It appears foursquare has gone through and properly categorized lots of venues that appear to be homes, either by name or by checkin pattern (i.e., only one person has checked in). The number of venues named “home” but without a category has declined drastically over the past few days.
Venues that didn’t get caught by foursquare won’t receive any of the privacy protections, so it’s important for users to take the time to make sure their homes are properly categorized. If you have friends who’ve abandoned foursquare but left their miscategorized home venues in place, it might be worth a nudge to get them to come back to foursquare to get their home updated properly, too.
This is a great enhancement to user privacy on foursquare. Thousands of users have added their homes without realizing the privacy implications of posting that information on the internet, so it’s nice that foursquare has taken these proactive steps to help increase the security of their homes.
 UPDATE (9/29): Foursquare has confirmed the changes in a blog post.
That’s great! I’ve been using a neighborhood check-in lately. This might actually push me to finally put my real home in the system.
Cool! I noticed this earlier today. An Idea how it works with the mobile apps, either viewing the venue or seeing your friends checked in on a map?
I’m glad foursquare addressed this issue. I’ve never really been interested in putting my home on but its obvious that Millions of do. It’s not really what foursquare was intended for but its good to see them roll with it.
Quick question about its implementation. Not that I would but can’t a superuser remove the ‘Home’ category, get the address, then add it back? Seems like a loophole but I’m sure SUs aren’t really interested in it.
[...] [h/t About Foursquare] [...]
Looks like a SU can still edit a home venue and see the exact address…or am I wrong.
You’re correct. I didn’t think to check that. That’s a pretty huge oversight that I’m sure they’ll fix soon.
Cool. This has been discussed for almost two years. Glad to see it implemented,
[...] A partir de ahora la solución es la de marcar, dentro del servicio, una localización geográfica concreta como nuestra vivienda. Podremos seguir utilizando la herramienta como de costumbre, pero si alguien ve el check-in y no es nuestro amigo en la red entonces no será capaz de saber ni la calle ni el lugar concreto, pues no se le mostrará el tÃpico pin dentro del mapa, sino solamente una zona general. [...]
[...] [Via] Posted in Applications, Mobile News Tags: Application, foursquare, Privacy, Smartphones « HTC Rhyme Preorders Through Radio Shack You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. /* [...]
[...] AboutFoursquare rapporte une mise à jour de la plateforme de géolocalisation, qui va dans le sens d’une meilleure confidentialité. Il était possible de se checker chez soi, de la même manière que dans un bar ou une boutique, en indiquant son adresse et sa position GPS. Afin de permettre à nos contacts de savoir que l’on est chez soi donc… La mà j permet toujours d’indiquer que l’on se trouve chez soi, mais les données précises ne seront pas mentionnées et seulement une zone sera indiquée. Ainsi on ne communique pas son adresse réelle à d’autres contacts Foursquare. Mais rassurez-vous, les pages blanches y remédieront. [...]
[...] – September 20, 2011Opini Leave a comment /**/ TweetFoursquare baru-baru ini meningkatkan privasi yang dimiliki penggunanya dengan “mengaburkan” alamat suatu venue jika yang dimaksud [...]
[...] this new update, which was first noticed by the About Foursquare blog, will help alleviate most of these concerns. Users can now obscure their address by [...]
[...] update, first spotted by About Foursquare, enables the user to designate a Foursquare locale as a private residence by [...]
[...] but pin and travel number. This will be identical to how restaurants and stores are decorated as reported by [...]
Yes, SU can edit the category from home to a non-home category and see the blue dots. Theoretically possible, but far easier ways to stalk people!
Actually this doesn’t seem to be the case, I found an uncategorized home, once I changed it’s category to home I lost the ability to edit it or change the category. My view as an SU3 seems to be equal to what a normal (non-SU) users is when it comes to home venues.
Yep, that changed late yesterday afternoon. They’re still rolling out the changes. I accidentally jumped the gun on reporting them.
[...] this new update, which was first noticed by the About Foursquare blog, will help alleviate most of these concerns. Users can now obscure their address by [...]
[...] this new update, which was first noticed by the About Foursquare blog, will help alleviate most of these concerns. Users can now obscure their address by [...]
[...] Fonte: http://aboutfoursquare.com/a-house-is-not-a-home-foursquare-gives-homes-more-privacy/ Esta entrada foi publicada em Geral. ligação permanente. ← Praias de Sesimbra [...]
[...] Foursquare comparte muchas cosas con tus amigos, sin embargo el sitio exacto de tu casa queda cubierto, no te preocupes por tu privacidad. [...]
Too bad many homes are categorized as “Speakeasy”. “Gay Bar”, “Dive Bar”, “Strip Club” or some other incredibly witty and totally original category.
[...] addresses with complete strangers. About Foursquare was first to report the new update for the location-sharing service, which allows any user to elect a Foursquare location as a private residence. The user just has to [...]
[...] recently, Foursquare added a new privacy setting that lets users have their home stored on Foursquare without broadcasting their physical [...]
[...] Foursquare Gives Homes More Privacy: You can now check in to your home on Foursquare without sharing your address. [...]
[...] È  una notizia di qualche giorno fa, lo ammetto, ma la reputo interessante: Foursquare gives homes more privacy. [...]
I’m glad that there is more privacy. The internet has made privacy nearly impossible in today’s world.
It kind of sucks I can no longer delete venues like “Your Mom” or “In My Pants” if they’re categorized as homes now. Overall though, it was a step in the right direction for privacy.
I agree, Christopher. There are some nasty named venues out there. Some really, really inappropriate.
SU’s don’t have delete powers, so you must mean ‘close.’ It is still possible to MFD (mark for deletion) any home venue that went crazy with foul language – use the “Report a problem” link. But as we all know, these’ll just go into that big (and getting bigger) deletion queue that Foursquare only works on on odd-numbered Fridays that end a calendar month.
i am agree with it really nice information for privacy.