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The location based social networking service, Loopt, has been working hard to overcome a recent PR stumble.  As Loopt explains on their website, Loopt shows users where friends are located and what they are doing via detailed, interactive maps on their mobile phones. Loopt helps friends connect on the fly and navigate their social lives by orienting them to people, places and events. Users can also share location updates, geo-tagged photos and comments with friends in their mobile address book or on online social networks, communities and blogs. 

Recently, users began of accusing Loopt of distributing text based spam and disclosing personal information to area merchants such as cell numbers and geographic location.  Loopt reports that they have resolved the issue but the incident illustrates the privacy concerns that will become more prevalent as GPS-enabled cell phones and a growing number of service offerings similar to Loopt. 

Critics argue that cell users are setting themselves up to be human cookies (the computer type) as merchants long to be able to send text advertisements to users as they approach or walk past their stores.  An example would be if you were to walk past a Starbucks and a text ad for a 10% off coupon comes across your cell screen. 

The consensus of privacy advocates is that the temptation for specifically targeting potential customers will eventually become too overwhelming.  Remember that as much as we all hate email based SPAM, it works and is highly cost efficient.  There is a bright spot however, maybe people will be less inclined to use their cell phones in public in the future in order to escape the endless stream of text SPAM. 

Brad Rudisail
Computer Network Technician-Network Security Instructor
Ashworth University

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 1:27 pm and is filed under IT, Metaverse, Communications, Wireless, Trends, Digital, Reviews, Telecommunications, Semantic Web, Processing, Applications, Messaging, Apple, Data, Mobile, Web 2.0-3.0, Internet, Networking, Business, Techno-Politics, Software, Hardware, Social Media, Cyberculture, Innovation, Websites, Computing, Operating Systems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.