The much anticipated location tracking service by World’s finest search engine – Google, finally arrived. Utilizing the GPS chipset inside smart phones such as Blackberry, Google Android, Windows Mobile PDA phone and selected model of Nokia, Latitude can pinpoint your location by finding the intersection of your distances from three or more satellites. This process is called ‘triangulation’.
With this new upgrade of Google Maps, you can locate your friends or family location even if they don’t have a dedicated GPS tracking system. Besides, you could share your whereabout with your family without having to frequently calling them to update your location – a good way of monitoring your teens.
However, merely a day after it’s debut, Latitude has been criticized by many Information Security forum, newsgroups and blogs. Privacy concerns has become the primary topics when discussing about Latitude. But why are they so worried about Latitude when their privacy has long gone?
Many of us will remember the movie ‘Enemy of The State’, starred by Will Smith (Robert Clayton). Clayton, a successful lawyer became a victim of privacy intrusion by his own government. Using high technology devices planted in his home, office and even on his clothing. But do you realize that the technology portrayed in the movie does exist?.
Like others, you may indirectly permitted yourself to be tracked, documented and your privacy breached in exchange for living a life of convenience. When you signed for credit card application, housing loan or even car financing, have you really read the fine print? In most cases, states that you give your permission to have your personal information collected by, “exchanged with”, and even sold to third parties throughout the course of the business.
If you have signed up with loyalty program, be it from oil company where you’ll earn points each time you pump in petrol, or reward point system from a shopping mall, you may not realize that you’re allowing the program operators to track you spending pattern which includes what and where you buy?, allowing them to share this information to third party, especially those telemarketer. So, don’t be surprised if someone called you offering a so called FREE or COMPLIMENTARY stay in a hotel if you agree to join their holiday or time sharing membership.
The similar way of tracking individuals is also done via their personal computers. Downloading songs and software using P2P or ‘peer to peer’ application is the common way of how one’s privacy got hijacked. By accepting the Terms of Service (TOS), users agree to have the cookie place on their computer. Cookies or also known as Spyware in Information Security world may provide information about the computer owners name, telephone number, email address and other personal particular, retrieved from the operating system. All the information were provided by the users themselves when they first registered their operating system and software. Other information may be obtained on the type of software and computer used, website visited and Internet searches performed by the user.
We can’t deny that Latitude could be a bonus to stalkers, jealous wives and con artists, but there isn’t much we can do in this digital world. Even without Latitude, your privacy may have long been intruded!.