Google knows where you are

Posted in 'Neighbourhood' by Richard Catlin

12 February 2009

Google’s latest application Latitude has come under fire from privacy campaigners, worried that the search engine giant may have taken a step too far in sharing information about us.

Latitude allows you to see the location and status messages of friends and family (and vice versa) on Google Maps and is aimed at things like arranging impromptu social meetings or making sure people get home safely. It requires both parties to opt in, and allows you to hide your location at any time, or set different privileges for different people.

This doesn’t go far enough for many people however, who have raised further concerns over privacy invasion and even personal security. Although the Latitude application requires you to opt-in and allow people to track your whereabouts, the potential for someone to gain access to a phone and enable it without the owners knowledge has been put forward as a real danger.

Stalkers, obsessive friends, suspicious employers and jealous ex-partners are all singled out as possible security concerns.

Google Stalking is not a new concept, and we’ve written about this regularly in the past – it’s simply a phrase coined for using the huge amounts of information held about almost all of us on the internet to vet potential friends, partners, employees – the list is endless.

With Valentines Day just passed, the number of people checking out prospective partners is likely to have hit an annual peak, but there are less obsessive ways of having a sneaky peek at how someone measures up.

Our own free Postcode Check Service allows you to see how any postcode in the UK is rated in terms of credit rating, affluence and social class as well as the actual prices that houses have sold for recently. If nothing else, you’ll be able to get a good idea of whether their boasts about living in a posh area of town are actually true.

To check how your own, or any postcode in the UK is rated, simply click here. You can use it as many times as you like for free, and it’s completely anonymous.