Facebook has received criticism with their privacy issues, but there's a new social app in town that knows where you live - and ironically, it's called Creepy.
Creepy is a 'geolocation information aggregator' that is a software package for Windows or Linux. Basically, it connects with social networks such as Twitter and Flickr to pull your targeted geographical location. People tend to forget that geographical data is contained within shared images. And even if you are aware, you probably aren't aware that social apps like Creepy know exactly where you live and are allowing random people to access your information.
Creepy uses APIs to access your photos and tweets that have been published to your accounts. Creepy then analyzes the information and delivers the report to the users who asked for your geo-information. I foresee BIG debates about this social app - especially when it comes to the safety of minors who use social networks. My question to Creepy - are you going to monitor the usage of pedophiles who use your app? I don't want anyone accessing where I live, let alone where children live. The clusters of geo-information found by Creepy pinpoints the exact location of a person's workplace or personal residence - and that is definitely CREEPY!
As someone who uses social media on a regular basis and encourages my clients to use it for their marketing, social apps such as Creepy puts people's privacy at risk and opens up more opportunities for spammers and even stalkers.
According to Creepy, they warn people about the risks involving geo-location aware services. That really doesn't make sense to me. Their social app is all about 'creeping' people out (literally), yet in the same breath they tell people not to use Foursquare, Twitter, etc.
Creepy gets a big thumb downs from me. We already have enough to worry about with Facebook and its privacy battles, but we don't need a "Creepy" app tracking our every geographical move.
With any information you post online, be cautious and careful and please carefully monitor your children's social networks. Unfortunately, I foresee a trend in more social apps who will extract our personal data. However, Creepy takes it too far and social apps should NOT be used at the expense of potentially harming people and threatening their safety.
For more information about how to protect your online privacy, check out these websites:
http://www.eff.org/wp/effs-top-12-ways-protect-your-online-privacy
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ou/how-to-protect-your-online-privacy/661
