Foursquare: Don't Bury One's Head In The Sand

The opinions expressed here are purely my own and not those of Intel. However, what I write about is clearly influenced by my job and exposure to ideas at Intel.

As an introvert, many parts of social media aren't intuitively obvious. Foursquare is a pretty good example. My intuition immediately links it to PleaseRobMe.com. Thus, I find it hard to recommend for someone wanting to protect their privacy, safety, and security.

However, to ignore the changes in modern society is simply to be an ostrich and assume that ignoring something will make it go away. Yes, sometimes that works, but it isn't a sound strategy.

Moreover, people enjoy games and that adding fun to one's experience actually enhances one's life. This can be coupled with many a corporations desire to know more about you. A big part of social media is trading our privacy for some other benefit. One common way corporations attempt to extract that info is by involving you in games and contests.

Much of this blog is trying to help you avoid making that trade unintentionally, giving away your privacy or safety for something of dubious value. That is still a sound principle. Being aware that most internet and social activities are designed to extract information about you and repackage it for resale is important.

I (sadly at one level, but ultimately peacefully) gave up playing games on the internet almost ten years ago, because I realized that the information I was giving up and the risk I was putting myself in were not worth the value I was receiving from playing. This was particularly true for the online lotteries. Although the aphorism that you can't win if you don't play is true, in the end I determined that I probably couldn't win by playing either and was simply putting myself at risk for downloading malware.

The same holds true for me for a host of other online games. At one time in my life, I truly enjoyed the fantasy of role-playing games. I can even understand those who are willing to get dressed up in costume and go to conventions for their favorite escape. However, the risk for me of having my privacy invaded by participating keeps me far on the sideline.

Given this context, you can understand why I would be reluctant to recommend Foursquare to anyone. Using foursquare certain gives away information about you. I would certainly recommend anyone considering it to think carefully through what you are trading, for what you are gaining. You need to be clear that you are getting something back for that information you are giving away.

When will using foursquare put you at risk, and what will it put you at risk for?

After assessing that, what potential will you possibly gain from using foursquare.

At the same time, you need to consider those alternatives rationally and honestly and realize that by our very nature, we as humans are particularly poor estimators of risk and the trade-offs between risk and reward. As humans our tendency is to over-estimate risks that seems particularly detrimental and under-estimate ones that involve common-place events. Otherwise, we would never get on a chair as a substitute ladder to reach something just a little bit too far away and ending up falling--a surprisingly common error we all make.

In light of that, determine for yourself how much additional risk you are taking by joining foursquare. Are you broadcasting information that isn't readily available already? Can that information be used in some way to your detriment?

To make this concrete, let us consider a couple of specific examples based on the PleaseRobMe.com model.

1. You are a single 9-5 working person living in an apartment. In this case, it is probably obvious that you work all day and that your apartment is vacant during that time. Incremental risk from using foursquare to check in at your favorite restaurants, probably limited.


2. You work from home and thus stay at home almost all the time. In this case, tracking the times you are away might be significantly valuable. Especially, if long trips are involved. Incremental risk from using foursquare to check in at Disney, much higher.

The key distinction is whether the fact that you are away is unusual. That makes it more valuable.

However, if one really wanted to do the analysis, one would need some numbers to work with. To my knowledge, no one has yet compiled any comparative statistics on the number of people whose homes were robbed who were using foursquare versus non-users. While I would expect some marginal incremental risk, I would expect that the number would be less significant than the location of one's house. Some neighborhoods just get robbed more than others. I would be willing to bet that the choice of neighborhood was a more significant variable than foursquare usage in home robbery rates.

Therein lies the point. Don't skip using foursquare simply because the fear of a home robbery is so dreadful that you over magnify its probability. Skip using it only if the benefits are dubious to you. If you find something interesting that you might be able to benefit from by using foursquare, the risk from using it is probably not that high, so go ahead and indulge.

For example, if you attend a conference, like IDF, where Intel is involved and you have a foursquare account, there is a good chance that there will be contests and giveaways for those who check-in. By the way when you do so, read the fine print first. Intel has a very strict policy about how it can use the information it gathers, so we will have to tell you what your checking in means and how we might use that information in the future. That's a standard everyone should be held to.