Loopt and other services: goodbye to privacy

Reprinting this NYT story as a public service.

New York Times, 23 Oct 07

Privacy Lost: These Phones Can Find You

By LAURA M. HOLSON


Two new questions arise, courtesy of the latest advancement in
cellphone technology: Do you want your friends, family, or colleagues
to know where you are at any given time? And do you want to know where
they are?

Obvious benefits come to mind. Parents can take advantage of the
Global Positioning System chips embedded in many cellphones to track
the whereabouts of their phone-toting children.

And for teenagers and 20-somethings, who are fond of sharing their
comings and goings on the Internet, youth-oriented services like Loopt
and Buddy Beacon are a natural next step.
Sam Altman, the 22-year-old co-founder of Loopt, said he came up with
the idea in early 2005 when he walked out of a lecture hall at
Stanford.

"Two hundred students all pulled out their cellphones, called someone
and said, 'Where are you?' " he said. "People want to connect."

But such services point to a new truth of modern life: If G.P.S. made
it harder to get lost, new cellphone services are now making it harder
to hide.

"There are massive changes going on in society, particularly among
young people who feel comfortable sharing information in a digital
society," said Kevin Bankston, a staff lawyer at the Electronic
Frontier Foundation based in San Francisco.

"We seem to be getting into a period where people are closely watching
each other," he said. "There are privacy risks we haven't begun to
grapple with."

But the practical applications outweigh the worries for some converts.

Kyna Fong, a 24-year-old Stanford graduate student, uses Loopt,
offered by Sprint Nextel. For $2.99 a month, she can see the location
of friends who also have the service, represented by dots on a map on
her phone, with labels identifying their names. They can also see
where she is.

One night last summer she noticed on Loopt that friends she was
meeting for dinner were 40 miles away, and would be late. Instead of
waiting, Ms. Fong arranged her schedule to arrive when they did.
"People don't have to ask 'Where are you?'" she said.

Ms. Fong can control whom she shares the service with, and if at any
point she wants privacy, Ms. Fong can block access. Some people are
not invited to join ― like her mother.

"I don't know if I'd want my mom knowing where I was all the time," she said.

Some situations are not so clear-cut. What if a spouse wants some time
alone and turns off the service? Why on earth, their better half may
ask, are they doing that? What if a boss asks an employee to use the
service?
So far, the market for social-mapping is nascent ― users number in the
hundreds of thousands, industry experts estimate.

But almost 55 percent of all mobile phones sold today in the United
States have the technology that makes such friend-and- family-tracking
services possible, according to Current Analysis, which follows trends
in technology.

So far, it is most popular, industry executives say, among the college set.

But others have found different uses. Mr. Altman said one customer
bought it to keep track of a parent with Alzheimer's. Helio, a mobile
phone service provider that offers Buddy Beacon, said some
small-business owners use it to track employees.

Consumers can turn off their service, making them invisible to people
in their social-mapping network. Still, the G.P.S. service embedded in
the phone means that your whereabouts are not a complete mystery.

"There is a Big Brother component," said Charles S. Golvin, a wireless
analyst at Forrester Research. "The thinking goes that if my friends
can find me, the telephone company knows my location all the time,
too."

Phone companies say they are aware of the potential problems such
services could cause.
If a friend-finding service is viewed as too intrusive, said Mark
Collins, vice president for consumer data at AT&T's wireless unit,
"that is a negative for us." Loopt and similar services say they do
not keep electronic records of people's whereabouts.

Mr. Altman of Loopt said that to protect better against unwelcome
prying by, say, a former friend, Loopt users are sent text messages at
random times, asking if they recognize a certain friend. If not, that
person's viewing ability is disabled
.
Clay Harris, a 25-year-old freelance marketing executive in Memphis,
says he uses Helio's Buddy Beacon mostly to keep in touch with his
friend Gregory Lotz. One night when Mr. Lotz was returning from a
trip, Mr. Harris was happy to see his friend show up unannounced at a
bar where he and some other friends had gathered.

"He had tried to reach me, but I didn't hear my phone ring," Mr.
Harris said. "He just showed up and I thought, 'Wow, this is great.'"

He would never think to block Mr. Lotz. But he would think twice
before inviting a girlfriend into his social-mapping network. "Most
definitely a girl would ask and wonder why I was blocking her," he
said.

technorati: Loopt, privacy, tracking, stalking, mobile phones