'Girls Around Me' App Pulled From Apple Store
A new app that allowed users to see where others were in a particular area has been pulled from the Apple App store after growing concerns and criticism that the app invaded privacy and enabled "stalkers."
The app "Girls Around Me" used public application programming interfaces (APIs) from Google Maps, Facebook and Foursquare in order to map where other users where in a given area.
A user of the app, who had public privacy settings on their Facebook account and "checked-in" to a location using Foursquare, would potentially have their information used by the controversial app, which would then plot their location and provide that information to any other app users.
"When you see something so out of context with what you expect, it ends up being shocking," Jules Polonetsky, the director of the Future of Privacy Forum, told itworld.com.
"I get that when I'm out in a big crowd, I'm not secret. But it's still seems bizarre if someone scans every face in the crowd and then somehow identifies it. It seems to push beyond the appropriate context," polonesky said.
But the makers of the app SMS Services claim that their product has been misunderstood.
"It is impossible to search for a particular person in this app, or track his/her location," a company representative said in a statement.
The statement continued: "The app just allows the user to browse the venues nearby, as if you passed by and looked in the window."
But John M. Simpson, the director of Consumer Watchdog's privacy project, explained that even if someone has the ability to do something it does not necessarily mean that it should be done.
"Just because something is technologically possible is no justification for necessarily doing it … Many, many people have no idea the amount of information that they're sharing on Facebook … People sometimes go on and never realize the extent to which things can be seen," Simpson said.
