Facebook Places Gains Ally With EFF, Critic With ACLU

Facebook is responding to privacy concerns raised by the ACLU with its new Places release that allows mobile users to broadcast their location to friends, and received qualified support in its efforts from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The Places function pits the technology that allows mobile device users to easily broadcast their location against concerns that those users may not understand the privacy implications of such openness.

With Places, users can "check in" using their mobile phone and choose from a list of locations near where they are. They can also key in the location. At that point, they can write a story about their activity, which will then be sent to friends via the Facebook News Feeds.

Users can also see who is checked in at that location, and can prevent others from seeing them as checked in at a location by unchecking the "Include me in 'People Here Now' after I check in" privacy control, Facebook said.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday blogged that, while Facebook has limited the default visibility of a user's feed to "Friends Only," it has failed to build in other important privacy safeguards.

Facebook on Thursday made a video available on its Website that shows users how to configure their privacy settings for Places.

Andrew Noyes, a Facebook spokesperson, separately wrote in an e-mailed statement that the ACLU’s Northern California office is ignoring Facebook Places' new standard for user control and privacy protection, and in general misunderstands how Places works.

Noyes wrote that the ACLU's suggestion for controlling privacy via the "Here Now" function is more complex than necessary, and that all a user needs to do is turn off ’Here Now’ and set the ’Places I check-in’ control to the appropriate setting for the visibility he or she desires.

For users who set their master privacy control to ’Friends of Friends’ or ’Friends,’ or who customize their settings to be restrictive, the "Here Now" setting is automatically not enabled, Noyes wrote.

Next: Just Say No, If You Want To

People wanting to get information about the location of a particular user need to first request and receive access through a clearly labeled and simple permissions dialog, Noyes wrote.

"All you need to do is uncheck a box in your privacy settings under 'Applications and Websites' to prevent this info from being shared by your friends. And, if you’ve already gone in and unchecked the other boxes, the 'Places I check-in' box will be unchecked for you," he wrote.

In response to the ACLU's assertion that Facebook makes it easy for a user's friends to say "yes" to get that user's check-in information, but are given a "not now" option instead of a straight-forward "no," Noyes said that every person on Facebook must agree before they check in or can be checked in to a place to be associated with any location.

"ACLU NC ignores the many protections built into the system—only confirmed friends can try to check you in, to tag you a friend must also check themselves in, you are notified every time someone tries to check you in, and you can easily remove any tag," he wrote.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation also weighed in on the Places privacy controversy on in a blog post in which the non-profit digital rights organization warned that Places, like any location product, publishes potentially sensitive information about the user.

"Some locations might appear cool at one moment, and yet become something you'd rather forget the next. Your Facebook friends may include prolific bloggers, business competitors, and former lovers. For business and personal reasons, you might need to keep your location private from them," the EFF wrote.

Next: EFF Calls Places "Positive" While Warning Against Certain Practices

Facebook by default allows only a users' Facebook friends to see when they are tagged in a location unless they opt for the "Everyone" master setting, which the EFF recommends against. Users can also fine-tune their friend lists to control who sees check-ins, and can manually delete specific locations from their permanent records, it wrote.

While Facebook makes it easy for users to broadcast their location via the "Here Now" function, users should probably out of "Here Now" in large areas like a ballpark or outdoor music festival, as there is no way to limit "Here Now" to specific subsets of friends, the EFF wrote.

Facebook also does not make it easy for users to "spoof" or report a location other than their current location, which also raises privacy issues. "For example, you might want to report your location as being at a cafe, when you are really at an HIV clinic or a domestic violence shelter," the EFF wrote.

The EFF wrote that it has worked with Facebook before the launch of Places, and that while it is not perfect and could use some important changes, Places is overall a positive experience for users.

"However, the settings are only good if users understand them intuitively and use them effectively. As the product rolls out to millions of Facebook users, we will be looking closely at its implementation and effects on locational privacy," the EFF wrote.