CYBER-SAFETY

5 Ways Facebook Places Is Bad For Gays (And How To Stop Them)

Facebook pissed in the faces of everyone’s privacy again yesterday by activating Places, which allows you and your so-called friends to check-in and announce your location on mobile devices — kinda like Yelp!, Gowalla and Foursquare, but with 500 million onlookers. The company claims it’s not about publicizing your location, it’s about promoting local businesses, socializing, and creating memories to share with your grandkids (awwww!). But it’s also definitely another revenue stream for the company that changes its privacy agreement every week and then lets blogs tell you about it. Yes, there’s overblown alarm about the program’s potential drawbacks, but tell that to a closeted teen, or a lesbian who likes to cheat. Here are five way Places it could make your life hell. And how to avoid them.

It could out you to friends, family, and your boss.

You’re a private person who prefers to keep your professional life and sex life separate — maybe you’re even a little, shall we say, closet-y. That’s fine: your sexuality, your business. So don’t share everything you do on Facebook. But what about your flamboyant drinking buddy Toni? Toni will check you in to locations just by tagging you the same way he would in a photograph. After a few tagged nights at the Kit-Kat club and LGBT community center, everyone will catch on to how you swing.

SOLUTION: Since you get email notifications every time you’ve been tagged, you can always “un-tag” yourself from a location. Or if you’re worried about it, you can opt out of the program altogether.

It could make it easier for stalkers, thieves, and bashers to find you.

Google Maps already makes it very easy for someone to locate your address and even see the facade of your house; Bing lets you see the bird’s eye view. Now local no-goodniks and frenemies can see in real-time when you’re not home and ransack your house. Or wait for you with a nailbat to return home. Fun.

SOLUTION: Right now Google allows for people in Germany to make their houses invisible on maps. But until they allow everyone else to that, don’t approve strangers or vindictive drama queens (like Michael Lucas). De-friend enemies immediately and also change your social settings so that only friends can see what’s on your profile.

Your constant irresponsibility is now apparent to everyone.

Are you the sort of person who skips work and social obligations to go see Eat Pray Love and attend “Leatherbitch Night” at the Eagle? Now everyone and your mom will be able to see just where you were when you should have been working late or at her Shabbat dinner.

SOLUTION: You could just be a person of your word and actually do work or attend dinner when you promise. Or you could continue being a flake and judiciously choose what Facebook places you share. Instead of sharing every time you go out for happy hour or Haagen Dazs, post that you were doing community service at the children’s hospital — you’ll go from jerk to hero in no time! Of course you actually need to be in physical proximity to said children’s hospital to check in there, but surely there’s a drink special nearby.

It could allow your jerkoff friends to play horrid social pranks on you.

Your comedian pals could easily check you into sex museums, your ex-lover’s house, or the local dungeon whenever they please. Won’t everyone freak out when they seen you’ve been at Madame Bambi’s Double-Ended Pleasure Palace?

SOLUTION: Make better friends. Let them know how much you severely disapprove of their immature behavior, and then go slash their tires. Then start a Facebook campaign to inform everyone of their douchebaggery.

You become a spam haven.

I’ve recently noticed an increase in the hookerbots and spam coming into my Facebook inbox. Since Facebook’s goal is really just to create a living biography of your social history and then sell that information to advertisers, you can be sure their next “update” will sell collect and reveal even more personal details to the highest bidder. This isn’t technophobia, just the way Facebook does business.

SOLUTION: After learning more about digital privacy from the ACLU, privatize as much of your Facebook data as possible. Or better yet stop using Facebook (though we know that’s not gonna happen).

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