DwightDeGroff.com - Tech that Matters

I blogged earlier about our tendency, as humans, to reveal more than we ought in on-line communication through portals like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Yet, these are but a few of the ways in which we often fail to safeguard the rights to privacy that we defend and claim to cherish. A NY Times article says that researchers refer to this as the “privacy paradox”.

normally sane people have inconsistent and contradictory impulses and opinions when it comes to their safeguarding their own private information.

Today, Google announced a new service called Google Latitude – a new service for mobile devices and “iGoogle” that allows users to views the location of their friends and loved ones (who have opted to share the information). It’s a pretty cool idea – basically you (the user) can opt to other specified users to see your geographic location and vice-versa. Purportedly, this information can be adjusted per “friend” to show the best approximation of your location, a city-level view, hide your location entirely or even to provide intentional false information. “No honey, I’m not out boozing it up with the guys… I’m… at work… <typetypetype> … check Latitude.”

<keep reading after the jump!>

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