I think you're right about the patronizing tone. Most responses to this issue are plainly trying to raise the possible security implications of such misuse of publicly available user information.
Other than that, I think the author makes a strong case for people sharing their info publicly. Yes, they need to be aware about the implications but efforts MUST also be made to find and penalize apps that clearly misuse the data and violates people's intentions with which they shared the info in the first place.
But any such app is just an UI for presenting the data available for everyone. What if this app is just a open source UI with instructions on how to fit your own API key ? Finding and penalizing such apps would serve nothing.
The only solution to this is awareness on the users part and nothing else.
But every application has a specific action. See data is just well, data. What you do with it defines your application. Take something non-intrusive for a change, say the books a bookstore sells most. There's a wealth of information there. We could predict locally trending topics or the most common problems students face. But you could also predict what kind of audience the bookstore receives. It may not sound that creepy unless you find that the store gets a lot of depression related sales. That could get creepy very fast.
> The only solution to this is awareness on the users part and nothing else.
Awareness is extremely important even vital. But that is not it. Thousands of Girls Around Me apps probably exist and it is fairly possible though tough to find them. All I am saying is that efforts should be made in that regard as well.
Comments
I think you're right about the patronizing tone. Most responses to this issue are plainly trying to raise the possible security implications of such misuse of publicly available user information.
Other than that, I think the author makes a strong case for people sharing their info publicly. Yes, they need to be aware about the implications but efforts MUST also be made to find and penalize apps that clearly misuse the data and violates people's intentions with which they shared the info in the first place.
But any such app is just an UI for presenting the data available for everyone. What if this app is just a open source UI with instructions on how to fit your own API key ? Finding and penalizing such apps would serve nothing.
The only solution to this is awareness on the users part and nothing else.
Just a UI? Maybe.
But every application has a specific action. See data is just well, data. What you do with it defines your application. Take something non-intrusive for a change, say the books a bookstore sells most. There's a wealth of information there. We could predict locally trending topics or the most common problems students face. But you could also predict what kind of audience the bookstore receives. It may not sound that creepy unless you find that the store gets a lot of depression related sales. That could get creepy very fast.
> The only solution to this is awareness on the users part and nothing else.
Awareness is extremely important even vital. But that is not it. Thousands of Girls Around Me apps probably exist and it is fairly possible though tough to find them. All I am saying is that efforts should be made in that regard as well.