Last week I wrote a post discussing location based applications. In that particular post I focused on check-in applications like Foursquare, but there are MANY more out there offering the same capability.

  • Twitter allows you to tag each of your tweets with the location you are tweeting from.
  • Facebook is rumored to be adding their own check-in feature.
  • Yelp, one of the most well-known review apps, already has a check-in feature built into their mobile application.

But here’s the question I get the most, where do you draw the line?

lines

At what point are you sharing too much and therefore risking you and your family’s safety?

It’s an important question and one that everyone needs to consider before they begin using functionality like this. I can, and will, tell you where I draw the line, but only you can decide where you’re line falls.

  • I don’t check in at anyone’s home – not mine, not my friends’ and not my family’s.
  • I don’t check in at my kids’ schools.
  • I don’t check in at doctor’s offices.
  • I don’t check in at my bank.
  • I don’t accept Foursquare friend requests from people I don’t know.
  • I am careful of what I post as my status update on ANY social network sites so I don’t leave the impression my home is empty.

Do these choices I’ve made protect me completely from ending up in harm’s way? Of course not. Things happen, but these are boundaries that make the most sense for me. These are the boundaries I’m comfortable with.

Yours may be similar to mine. They may be looser. Or you may just decide to opt-out completely, and that’s ok too. The most important thing is that you make the decision for yourself and make conscious choices about what those boundaries are for you.

Ask yourself this, what could someone do with this information if they had a malicious intent?