Apparently Facebook management still hasn’t gotten the clue that users would like these options turned off by default and allow us to turn them on when we want.
If you haven’t heard, and I wouldn’t be surprised with how little Facebook does to inform their user base, there is a new feature called ‘Places’. It’s a location based service that allows you to check yourself and your friends in and out from various locations just like with Foursquare. The difference here is the ability for your friends to check you in and out.
The security concern here is that this provides a public broadcast of when you are away from your house on a long vacation or even for a short time frame. This is a burglars dream as you have pretty much given them the green light to you not being home.
So as with most new features Facebook rolls out it is HIGHLY RECOMMEND you turn this off and here is how:
If you’re not convinced that posting your location can be a bad thing, check out PleaseRobMe for some evidence. Of course, if you’re careful, check-ins aren’t inherently a bad thing. Whether or not you want to disable them is entirely up to you, but Facebook—yet again—has made the assumption that you want to take part in all of their privacy-eroding new features. If you don’t, or want a little more control over who can divulge your location, you can make this change pretty quickly through your privacy settings.
Thanks to Dan for sending this in as found on LifeHacker
