Foursquare shows they take user privacy seriously
It’s clear that foursquare has seen the erosion of user trust among Facebook users as that service rolled out obscure privacy settings and made it more difficult to keep their information private. Today they’ve rolled out changes to their privacy settings and posted some detailed explanations that make it clear they’re serious about protecting user privacy.
Much has been made lately of foursquare’s “stalker problem,” but the truth is that your foursquare checkins are only visible to people you’ve specifically added as friends, unless you choose to share it with a public network like Twitter. Their new privacy page does a much better job of explaining that so users won’t be caught off guard when someone learns their whereabouts through Twitter or Facebook. A new grid shows exactly where your checkin data is shared and how to adjust the settings. They’ve also added a number of entries regarding privacy to their FAQs.
On your user settings page, you’ll find a new setting that allow you to opt out of mayorships completely, so you’ll never show up as the mayor of a venue (you can still opt out of specific mayorships you’ve earned by clicking the “x” next to the mayorship on your profile page). You also gain more granular control over sharing your phone number and email address and can turn off some of the more annoying automated emails foursquare sent, like mayorship oustings and badge unlocks.
More importantly, they’ve added several notes about user privacy directly to the settings page, where it will be visible to the greatest number of users. For example, the Twitter section now contains a warning about who can see your checkins when you share them on Twitter:
These changes go a long way toward showing foursquare’s strict attention to user privacy and should help to resolve any doubts users may have had about sharing their checkins with foursquare.
What do you think of the new changes?
You missed one of the biggest changes, Chris: Strangers’ mayorships are visible on profile pages again.
Anyway, that “privacy grid” is complicated, and the “Privacy 101″ page is long. The haters and the newbies probably won’t bother reading them. Foursquare still needs to learn that you can’t placate people who make decisions without facts. After a certain point, it’s better just to tell them to go away.
You’re right, I completely missed that change. It’s a nice change, but I’d much rather see the “Who’s Been Here” lists return on venue pages.
I quote. The “Who’s been here” feature was useful and I wish it will return too.
The only “stalker” situation I’ve had with Foursquare was based on the venue page itself – not twitter or FB. I’d checked into a Borders just a few minutes before closing. A man I do not know went to the info desk and asked to have his girlfriend “Jenn” paged because he couldn’t find her. (I am Jenn and I am not his girlfriend.) The clerk did the page and of course no one showed up. With a name like Jenn I’m used to hearing it all the time and didn’t even look in his direction. He muttered, “Hmm. I wonder where she went,” and left the store. Luckily I’m too shy to have my own picture on my profile, and after this incident I check in when I’m leaving a venue, not arriving. Anyway, the point of this story was that people can “stalk” you once you check in if they are at the venue itself or monitoring the venue’s page for recent checkins.