Facebook moves to allay Places privacy concerns

Places is Facebook's first major foray into location-based services

Facebook has issued a video explaining to its 500 million users how they can stop themselves being checked in on the new Places tool, in an attempt to prevent another row over privacy erupting.

The firm has repeatedly been attacked over its privacy settings for many months, and Places has already started to draw fire from civil liberties groups.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ALCU) of Northern California criticised the feature, which works in a way similar to Foursqaure, for being set up as an opt-out service, instead of opt-in, and for being hard to turn-off.

"Facebook makes it very easy to say 'yes' to allowing your friends to check in for you. But when it comes to opting out of that feature, you are only given a 'not now' option. 'No' isn’t one of the easy options," a statement read.

"And if you use Places yourself, you aren’t even given a 'not now', you’re just told that friends are able to check-in for you and left to discover for yourself that you can change this setting by digging into your privacy controls. "

In response to such criticisms, the video from Facebook gives a detailed explanation of the ways in which the service can be customised and shows users how they can remove themselves altogether from the service if they wish.

Writing in a blog posting on the launch of Facebook Places, Augie Ray, an analyst from Forrester, said he expected Facebook would come in for some criticism, but added he thought the firm had showed it had learned from past mistakes with the new settings.

"It's nearly impossible to launch any new social feature without some level of privacy concern, and it remains to be seen whether users will like or dislike the fact that they can be checked in by their friends," he said.

"It is evident that Facebook has learned from past privacy missteps. By default, when users check into a place, this information will only be shared with friends and not the whole world. This reflects a different and more user-centric approach."