{"id":1531,"date":"2009-06-03T00:27:41","date_gmt":"2009-06-03T05:27:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/?p=1531"},"modified":"2009-06-03T00:27:41","modified_gmt":"2009-06-03T05:27:41","slug":"twitters-location-field-and-your-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2009\/06\/03\/twitters-location-field-and-your-privacy","title":{"rendered":"Twitter’s Location field and your privacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twitter has a wonderful Location:<\/b> field, and a lot of clients, like TwitterFon (for the iPhone), or twibble (for Symbian devices), tend to update the field automatically. They tend to update it with the phone’s built-in AGPS, so at worst, your accuracy in location, is about 100m or so. \"Location<\/a><\/p>\n

I find this to be a tiny problem. You can copy the location string (GPS coordinates), paste it into Google Maps<\/a> and find out that the person at the Location above, is at MidValley Megamall<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Who cares when you’re in a public location? That can be a good thing for bumping into friends. But what about stalkers who now know where you live? Or an angry wife, that knows you weren’t working late, but chilling out with the guys at a nearby pub?<\/p>\n

This is where Google Latitude<\/a> kind of makes sense. Its opt-in. You only share the location with your friends. Twitter is just open (very rarely, do people’s profiles remain private).<\/p>\n

Anyway, I thought it would be cool to write a quick Greasemonkey script to send me to Google Maps automagically. After all, Dive Into Greasemonkey<\/a> still applies… Quick search on userscripts.org, and I found Twitter Google Maps Link<\/a>. It does exactly what I want, so I didn’t need to hack up some JavaScript. Win :)<\/p>\n

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