Keeping privacy is something I learned to control instinctively, thanks to years of wars and the former police state where I lived that forced me to understand how to protect myself from interferers.
Our digital age has become a little bit difficult to control with the dozens of social networks available nowadays, which I’m kind of obsessed with. However, I’m reconsidering all of that. I have no longer become the private person I used to be, and I need to put an end to that.
On my iPhone I have an app called “Echofon” which I use to read the latest tweets tweeted by the people I’m following on Twitter. It’s a really cool app, that is very intuitive, fast and easy to use, unlike the extremely-slow twitterberry app that I had on the BlackBerry I had before I switched to the iPhone.
While “Echofon” is really good, it recently added a new feature that became available after I installed the latest update of the app. It offers the “Nearby Tweets” feature which allows the Twitter iPhone user to basically see whoever is tweeting nearby his/her place. This is not it. The feature depends on the iPhone’s GPS technology, allowing the user to locate the tweeting people on Google maps, identifying their exact location accompanied by the Tweeting person’s twitter page, photo, Web site link and the entire timeline of his/her tweets. See the screenshot posted in this entry.
As I noticed this, I have become so disturbed. I actually can walk to the tweeting person’s house and recognize him/her through his/her photo posted on their Twitter page. What disturbed me the most is that there are psychos in this country who can basically hurt you if they disagree with what you say or tweet, to be specific. So through this app, I can easily be attacked and even if I’m not attacked I don’t have my privacy anymore.
I don’t want some people to know where I live. Period!
This is not the first time I come across a privacy breach. Last month when Google announced its Buzz social media network, I woke up to see that I’m following literally every Gmail person in my contacts list. That was not the worst part. Thank goodness millions of people complained that the flawed Buzz system was ruining their privacy that it finally changed.
In Iraq, Google Earth made me nervous all the time. Insurgents, known for their use of technology, were able to locate basically anything they wanted through that satellite service.
Today, it’s not only the redundant and repetitive Google Buzz but also Linkedin (which I totally find useless), Foursquare (which I see as a place where people go to get coupons because some weirdo tells them they became the kings or Queens of their neighborhoods), FMyLife, Jaiku, Plurk, Twitter, Tumblr, Posterous, Yammer, Qaiku, Geni.com, Hi5, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Orkut, Skyrock, Qzone, Vkontakte, RenRen, Kaixin, ASmallWorld, studivz, Xing, RunAlong.se, Bebo, BigTent, Elgg, Hyves, Flirtomatic, etc… The list is too long for me to count.
All of these are too much. I find most of them useless, except for Facebook which I consider the most “private” amongst them. At least I know I can control who sees my content and even what content they can see!
You might have heard this before. Technology is making our life better but it’s also hurting us. I strongly believe we should stop for a minute before we tweet or facebook our content because this may put us or/and the others in danger.
