Stop Apps From Tracking You Without Your Knowledge Using Foursquare And Facebook [How-To]

Creepy stalking apps aren't going anywhere, but you can cut off their sources

Thanks to a great article by our own John Brownlee, we now know how easy it is for apps and people to stalk you using location-sharing services like FourSquare and Facebook. And now the more paranoid among you might be wondering, just how do I turn these things off?

Theoretically, you would have already checked the privacy settings when you signed up. But that’s like reading the manual before you switch on a new gadget: Almost nobody ever does it. So here’s a quick guide to locking down FourSquare, and a rather more involved guide to shutting down Facebook.

Read the rest of this post »

Girls Around Me Dev: We Didn’t Do Anything Wrong [Statement]

Girls Around Me dev i-Free says the app isn't meant to allow creeps to stalk girls. That's not what the app's website says.

When the creepy girl stalking app Girls Around Me went missing from the iTunes App Store last night, it wasn’t immediately clear who had pulled it: Russia-based i-Free, the developer behind the app, or Apple itself.

Now i-Free has clarified matters. They pulled the app themselves… but not because they think they did anything wrong. In fact, they’ve gone as far as to say that it is “unethical to pick a scapegoat to talk about the privacy concerns. We see this wave of negative as a serious misunderstanding of the app’s goals, purpose, abilities and restrictions.”

Oh really?

Read the rest of this post »