Social Location Media is not a new rage but maybe a new term. I made need to copyright the term if it does not already exist. What is Social Location Media (SLM) you ask? Four Square, Facebook Check-ins, Twitter, Waze, Yelp, Loopt, and Gowalla to name a few. These are geo-location services which is the proper term for “telling everyone where we are.”
One of the great things about SLM is that you can collect points and get discounts for “checking-in” at various places. If you become the Mayor using Foursquare you reap even bigger rewards including a small percentage off, free items and even social bragging rights. Businesses are now in tune with SLM services and use our check-ins to market to the public and very soon it will offer incentives specific to the individual.
I have the pleasure of providing brotherly security for several beautiful, intelligent, philanthropic, and highly social females who belong to a group they coined the D!PS. I will use them as an example of the good side of SLM.
Let’s say the D!PS are out at one of the many Hank Stewart Foundation events they attend. The great thing about SLM is they can check-in at an event using one of the many SLM services and let everyone who follows/friends them know of their whereabouts and how to get to the event using Google Maps, etc.
All this is awesome right? Where is the downside? How could there be any danger in something so easy and care-free? Unfortunately we humans do not always have the best of intentions for each other and SLM has made it easier to do harm to each other.
Thanks to these same services mentioned anyone one who wanted to do harm to any of the D!PS just has to check one their social pages to find them. Fortunately for them they have a cadre of men who care about their safety. Not every woman is so blessed.
There are accounts of people’s houses being broken into and worse by using SLM. So how can we use SLM services and still guarantee our safety? We can’t, because there are no guarantees in life. Can we limit our social location footprint? Yes we can.
Let’s start with Facebook. Facebook has gone as far as to allow your “friends” to check you into a place without you knowing. This is where the openness of social media and safety has a big glitch. We all make social connections for various reasons such as networking, reuniting with old friends and acquaintances, staying in touch with family, etc. and we like to believe everyone has our best intention at heart.
One of the great things about SLM is that you can collect points and get discounts for “checking-in” at various places. If you become the Mayor using Foursquare you reap even bigger rewards including a small percentage off, free items and even social bragging rights. Businesses are now in tune with SLM services and use our check-ins to market to the public and very soon it will offer incentives specific to the individual.
I have the pleasure of providing brotherly security for several beautiful, intelligent, philanthropic, and highly social females who belong to a group they coined the D!PS. I will use them as an example of the good side of SLM.
Let’s say the D!PS are out at one of the many Hank Stewart Foundation events they attend. The great thing about SLM is they can check-in at an event using one of the many SLM services and let everyone who follows/friends them know of their whereabouts and how to get to the event using Google Maps, etc.
All this is awesome right? Where is the downside? How could there be any danger in something so easy and care-free? Unfortunately we humans do not always have the best of intentions for each other and SLM has made it easier to do harm to each other.
Thanks to these same services mentioned anyone one who wanted to do harm to any of the D!PS just has to check one their social pages to find them. Fortunately for them they have a cadre of men who care about their safety. Not every woman is so blessed.
There are accounts of people’s houses being broken into and worse by using SLM. So how can we use SLM services and still guarantee our safety? We can’t, because there are no guarantees in life. Can we limit our social location footprint? Yes we can.
Let’s start with Facebook. Facebook has gone as far as to allow your “friends” to check you into a place without you knowing. This is where the openness of social media and safety has a big glitch. We all make social connections for various reasons such as networking, reuniting with old friends and acquaintances, staying in touch with family, etc. and we like to believe everyone has our best intention at heart.
You can stop another person from checking you into places you are hanging together Go to Account --> Privacy Settings -> Customize Settings:
- Uncheck Enable -- Include me in "People Here Now" after I check in
- Select Disabled for Include me in "People Here Now" after I check in
Go to Account --> Account Settings --> Account Security and select Secure Browsing and though it may be a pain selecting Login Notifications is one of the best way to know when your Facebook page is being accessed. Login Approvals is also a good thing if you so choose.
Let’s move to Foursquare. This is a stalker and evil doer’s paradise
Foursquare by the numbers (last updated April, 2011)
•Users: Over 10 million worldwide
•Check-ins per day: Over 3 million, with over 600 million check-ins total
A person can literally tell where you work, live, and play daily. Some of us even Foursquare where our children go to school, daycare, etc. This combined with announcing our children’s names 5 times a day is a HUGE NO-NO. Pedophiles don’t have much work to do. STOP IT. Stop telling the world your children’s names and their whereabouts on social media. Now I’m not saying don’t use Foursquare just use it wisely.
Foursquare by the numbers (last updated April, 2011)
•Users: Over 10 million worldwide
•Check-ins per day: Over 3 million, with over 600 million check-ins total
A person can literally tell where you work, live, and play daily. Some of us even Foursquare where our children go to school, daycare, etc. This combined with announcing our children’s names 5 times a day is a HUGE NO-NO. Pedophiles don’t have much work to do. STOP IT. Stop telling the world your children’s names and their whereabouts on social media. Now I’m not saying don’t use Foursquare just use it wisely.
Not every check-in HAS to be broadcast to the world. Here is what you can do. Right before you click “Check In Here” for the second time you can de-select share with Facebook and Twitter to keep it from posting to them and also select No for Share with Friends. Now even your Foursquare friends will be clueless to where you are, unless of course they are with you.
Let’s talk about Foursquare friending. Don’t friend EVERYONE who asks. Make sure you are selective after all these people will know where you are checked into. They are alerted when you check in no matter if they are logged into Facebook or Twitter at the time.
Now onto our dear friend Twitter. With over 200 million users and over 200 million tweets a day people may not understand Twitter is the number one stalking tool probably going. Thanks to 3rd party Twitter tools like Tweetdeck, Tweetcaster, etc we can tweet not only on Twitter but connect the tweets to Facebook, Linked In, Foursquare, etc. as well as other products. Most people concentrate on the getting fired from our jobs aspect of twitter but not personal safety. Go check your settings right now, but come back to the blog we aren’t finished yet. If you don’t have HHTPS only checked, check it now. Of course if you have Protect my Tweets checked you are really trying to make sure you are safe and probably are patting yourself on the back. Do you have Tweet Location checked? If you do, ding ding ding, stalkers are drooling over your tweets. Some of us even provide our location in our profile. Most likely you geo-tagged from your house which is an invitation to over 200 million people to your house. I am now going to let you in on a little secret we geeks know. Even with all these turned off geeks like me can still triangulate where you tweet from. If you are like me and tweet the majority of the time from home that could be scary. I am not going to give away how due to safety concerns for you all.
So have I scared you enough into being wiser and safer when using SLM services? Men and Women both have stalkers and people who wish ill upon us. Be careful with your physical whereabouts. Remember when you check-in and you’re not home people can view this as an invitation to visit your property while gone. When out and about especially at nite travel to and from your motive of travel with someone. Block and remove as friends those who you know do not have your best interest at hand. Let someone know if you believe you are being stalked and change your profile or at least access to it. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop with the tagging of your children’s location and their names especially if they are young. Thank you for reading this blog. I hope you learned something from it, please pass it along to anyone and everyone you care about who is into social location media. Please feel free to leave comments and subscribe to my RSS feed. Stay safe and Happy SLM.
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