iPhone's safety, privacy extras

Kudos to Apple for building extra layers of privacy and safety right into the iPhones of users who use apps that reveal their physical location. "Apple has long provided pop-ups that ask users to approve an app's use of location information before that app can get access," reports New York Times computer security blogger Riva Richmond, but there will be more in the iPhone's new operating system (OS 4). "To make it clearer just how often approved apps are collecting data about users’ physical whereabouts, Apple will display an arrow in the status bar at the top of the screen, right next to the battery-life indicator, whenever a user's location is being tracked." This is on top of any safety features provided by the services themselves (e.g., loopt's frequent privacy reminders and Glympse's see-where-I-am-only-for-the-next-30-minutes timeout feature, explained by ReadWriteWeb). As the Times's Richmond writes, we all love being able to find friends and great places to eat with the geolocation technology on all new phones, but we're not so crazy about letting just anybody track us or telling "a frienemy where the party is"!

Foursquare & other geolocation apps: For young adults, not kids

More and more, I'm seeing tweets about people becoming mayors of coffee shops in my Twitter stream. They're playing Foursquare on their phones, which pushes their "checkins" or location disclosures out to their Twitter followers. Foursquare is part cellphone social-mapping game, part Yelp (another way to find food, drink, or friends using your phone's geolocation technology). "A large number of foursquare users send their checkins to Twitter and/or Facebook, and therefore make their location available to an audience much larger than just their foursquare friends," says Foursquare. It's not for everybody. Someone over at eModeration in the UK (a company that helps keep kids safe in virtual worlds) thinks it's kind of dumb. It's really not for children. But there's a safer way to play it, if they insist. If yours do, ask them not to use their real photo; you don't want them identified by their photo in shops or restaurants where they "check in." They can just post a face shot of their avatar or dog or favorite cartoon character in their profile. One of the appeals for kids (young and old) is that, like kids' virtual worlds that sell real-world plush toys, Foursquare has real-world objects that serve as awards or "nerd merit badges" representing "the virtual achievements you get for checking in to places using Foursquare," Mashable reports. In other words, you get points for showing up at your favorite Starbucks, points which can add up to becoming its "mayor."

This morning I testified at a US House of Representatives joint-subcommittee hearing on "The Collection and Use of Location Information for Commercial Purposes" – the privacy and safety implications of just this sort of technology. There definitely seemed to be a consensus in the hearing room that consumer privacy law needs to be updated and that, to be effective over the long term, the updating shouldn't focus on any single technology. I completely agree with that because the people who used to have control over how cellphone users' location information is used – the mobile carriers – no longer always do. More and more, control is spread out across the spectrum: carrier, operating system provider (e.g., Apple, Google, Microsoft), app developer, and consumer (because, with apps like Foursquare, we're disclosing our own location). It's all becoming a mashup - which is why parents need to know that all these apps on iPhones and iPod Touches allow kids to share their location.

So – if your child's phone is on a family plan behind your password with, say, AT&T or Verizon Wireless, and if you don't use the parental control that blocks app downloads (something to consider if they're not telling you what they download) – it's a good idea periodically to check what apps your kids have on their phones and ask them what these apps do. If they share your child's location with anyone besides you, you'll want to have a conversation about who's on their contact list. Make sure it's only friends they know in "real life." Certainly all this goes, too, for iPod Touches, which are not on family cellphone plans. As for Google Buzz, which is both phone- and computer-based, see my post on that; parents will want to help their kids see the value of making their conversations "private," or just among friends, which points to a negotiation: All participants in the conversation need to agree that it's just for them and adjust privacy features accordingly.

[BTW, Foursquare isn't the only location-based cellphone app. Others are Brightkite and Whrrl (see this blog post); Gowalla, which isn't a social game (see this blog post); and the cellphone service loopt, which is becoming more app-like (see Mashable.com).]

A few Apple bytes for families

Some of Apple's just-announced news is good for families thinking about laptops for a new school year - now just one basic Macbook at $999 and a new Macbook Pro with much longer battery life for just $200 more, CNET reports. Apple also unveiled its new Snow Leopard operating system, to which Leopard users can upgrade for $29, the Washington Post reports, adding that "the company said it will use less disk space and run faster" than Leopard. Then there were the announcement about new iPhone hardware and software, including the new iPhone 3G S, which looks a like the current 3G but which Apple says performs "a variety of tasks 2-3 times as fast as the current model. It includes a new 3-megapixel camera that can record video in addition to still images, a voice-control feature that lets you place calls and control music playback by speaking commands to the phone, a digital compass and built-in support for Apple's Nike+ running-tracking system," according to the Post. The new 3.0 iPhone software Apple's releasing next week for the first time includes age-level parental controls for the phone's App Store, the New York Times reported recently. "All iPhone applications will be rated in one of four age categories: 4+, 9+, 12+, or 17+.... I assume," the Times's Saul Hansell writes, "the new system will allow Apple to accept more applications that it now rejects, on the theory that parents will be able to limit children from getting applications that can give them access to raunchy or violent material." So new controls spell added responsibilities for parents of iPhone users.