Chris Peterson

When Facebook announced its places feature, you may have wondered “hrm, how long will it be before this undermines my privacy?”

Nick O’Neill at AllFacebook has some observations:

One feature that has attracted a fair amount of buzz is the ability for your friends to tag you in different places. That means you may not actually be somewhere, yet your friends will tag you as a joke and now you’re showing up at a random strip club.

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While you may be fine with Facebook’s existing Places privacy settings, I know there are plenty of friends on Facebook who I don’t want to track my location.

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One strange thing about Facebook Places is that despite controlling who can view your location information from within your profile with the previous setting, anybody who visits a location will potentially be able to view that you’ve been there before.

Nick runs through the ways to change your privacy settings. It’s worth the read, but here’s the short version:

• Go to the Privacy Tab and click “Customize Settings”
• Change your settings. For example, I disabled allowing my friends to check me in elsewhere, and noone can see where I check in.

I’m not big on the whole locations movement. Maybe you are, and that’s fine. But if you aren’t, Facebook just pitched you a curveball by opting users into the Places feature, so here’s how you opt out.