Foursquare Will Display Users' Full Names By Default

Location services can be useful and fun, but, depending on how paranoid ("cautious") you are, you might already dislike the idea of a social-network dashboard keeping track of where you are at a given moment. After all, bad guys can use computers, too. Now, Foursquare may up your level of caution just a bit: CNET reports that "Beginning January 28, 2013, users' 'full names' will be displayed across the check-in service and venue owners will have increased access to users' check-in data, the company announced in an e-mail sent to users late last night." Users, though, "will still have control of the name displayed by altering their 'full name' in their settings," and can opt out of the increased flow of data to business owners. For users' sake, I hope Foursquare doesn't go in for the "real names" fetish to the extent that both Google and Facebook have.

Comments

They are mentally ill.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's bad enough with fully, easily traceable public nicknames. The Internet has become something that I no longer want to have anything to do with. And yet there is no way to escape all this madness short of moving out to some cabin in the woods and living like a survivalist, which I really don't want.

You really try to reach out to people, but it's always in through one ear and out the other. They don't get it. They think you are crazy. It's maddening.

Even this site where I post this on, Slashdot, calls me an "Anonymous Coward" in an attempt to guilt-trip me into registering and logging in for anyone to track all my posts and violate my privacy.

Re:They are mentally ill.

[Frosty Piss]

The Internet has become something that I no longer want to have anything to do with.

Do you want the Intertubes all locked up? Or do you want them "open"?

Because with "open" comes responsibility. YOU put stuff about YOU on a public network, YOU give private data to companies and "agree" to their "privacy" policy.

In other words YOU are in the driver's seat about how much people on the Intertubes know about YOU.

So take some responsibility. Your name and consumer purchasing data didn't "just show up" in some huge database for sale to the highest bidder, in fact at some point YOU checked a box or scrolled through a EULA, and clicked "continue".

This is a side effect of being a "consumer" in a "consumer society".

Never understood the appeal of that app

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole idea of "checking in" was ridiculous to me in the first place. It immediately reminded me of the cartoon where the clever mice give the cat a bell as a gift. Why should anybody be surprised if they want to amp up the level of stupidity an extra notch?

Re:Great, so employees can start harassing...

[BitZtream]

So did you promptly post another review pointing out what the manager did and how you recommend no one visit that store ever?

That would have been about the best thing you could do. I realize that cutting yourself out of an in building place to eat lunch sucks, but a manager like that needs to be shit canned.

self-satisfied

[PopeRatzo]

I am really proud of the fact that I don't know what "Foursquare" is.

I really don't need to know what all of my friends are saying and doing at all times of the day and night. Shit, life is too short.

I wonder how many twenty-somethings are going to hit 40 and realize that they spent more time updating their social networks than actually doing something.