Girls Around Me App Reveals Dangers of Social Networking

GLOBAL – Posting updates online and sharing casual information on Facebook and other social sites is what millions of us do everyday. But ever wondered how disturbing and terrifying it would be if those petty information were used to track your movements?

This is exactly what the application Girls Around Me, by Russian mobile service company i-Free does. The app collects data from what people post online, updates that are shared with public on social sites such as Facebook and Foursquare and then display in a manner which is said by most to be unpleasant and immoral.

Girls Around Me collects data about women from their casual posts and tracks their movement. It can be considered beyond behavioural and moral point to use someone’s information in such displeasing fashion, but whatever the app does is not illegal. The application simply harvested on the information that was available to the public on social network sites, through APIs.

Any update one shares on social networks is an approval from them that information may be distributed. It is the poster who controls what information they allow to share. One way to manage this is not to share too much personal information or to rather make it private. All that has to be done is to make choice of what one has to share with whom.