Location, Location

By Kevin Jackson, CPA

Information: where does it all go? Vast amounts of information exist today and there are the obvious security risks and privacy concerns. As the amount of available information increases at a compounded rate, security and privacy concerns increase in tandem—but not everyone shares the same view regarding their privacy.

Combine hardware and software advances into such devices like smartphones, and you get a rich beacon of real-time whereabouts that can be helpful, yet intrusive. Millions of smartphone users have become comfortable using their phones to openly share information about themselves (including their current location) to social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Many of these folks get caught up in the novelty of posting updates and whereabouts and forget about the menacing issues of such behavior.

Forthehack, a concept and idea factory, created Pleaserobme.com, which aims to raise awareness to online privacy issues. The site provides real-time updates for “new opportunities” that a hypothetical burglar would find useful. Now you’re probably asking yourself, “Why would anyone be so careless to broadcast such information over the internet?” Location-based services like Google Latitude, Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt have become such popular trends that it seems many people don’t seem to be bothered with releasing such information. A recent CNET article noted that just a few years ago, mainstream internet users didn’t want their real names online, but now are publicly sharing their locations in real-time.

With many of us creating and maintaining social networking profiles, we must be careful about what we release into our profiles. Perhaps you should also revisit and understand your privacy settings within each site for which you have an existing profile.

On a lighter note, I’d like to extend my gratitude to all of your directors and officers who’ve been instrumental for another successful year for our chapter. The combined talents, dedication and generosity of your board has made my experience as president a pleasurable one. I’m indebted to them for their contributions and support. I’d also like to thank your program associate, Rita Williams, and program directors, Kay Coffin and Vince Chin, for their relentless support.  I’m indebted to everyone for their contributions and support. I am excited for the incoming slate of officers and look forward to their upcoming installation in May. Remember to mark your calendars for May 20 the Installation Dinner in May—and consider whether or not you will update your location-based service.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 9:58 am and is filed under President's Message. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.