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Comment by spellboots | Hacker News Reader

Is this not the entire point of Foursquare?

Seems like you're commenting based only on the title. Here's the first sentence of the article:

"It might sound weird to accuse Foursquare of collecting location data since that is the whole point of the service, but Foursquare is overstepping its bounds by constantly keeping track of their users' every move (and more) — even if they never open the app."

Still not surprised. This is a textbook example of why Apple originally refused to allow apps to run in the background- so now that Apple finally caved and apps can background, it was just a matter of time before exactly this sort of thing came up.

That is not the reason Apple didn't provide true background application support in iOS 2 & 3. It was a battery driven initiative by designing the push notification system over letting apps manage their own background runloop.

Plus iOS 5 introduced background support with location that did keep the GPS active and did drain the battery. Foursquare enabled it as a feature called "Radar" that was short lived due to the drain.

Hard to blame Foursquare which you need to install while Google itself is doing it on Android phones to track when Android phones enter stores.

http://digiday.com/platforms/google-tracking/

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/3402922

"This feature turns on when you opt in to Google now. "

Opt in, not opt out.

Why stop there? Nomi tracks any smartphone user who enters a physical store, without their consent[0]: http://www.getnomi.com/

[0] Storeowners install the device, and customers have to opt-out: http://nomi.com/privacy/

(I think) that this is an opt-in feature that came out a few months ago, so that 4sq could push suggestions to you about where you are, or notify you of nearby friends. At least, I remember being asked if I wanted this feature.

Yeah I thought the same thing. FourSquare is a location-based social network and game. The entire thing is built on knowing your location.

Nah. Check-ins only seems to be the point. They don't need to constantly track my location.

Not all users. I primarily use Foursquare for tracking where I've been, not for discovery. If I try to remember that great place I ate at last time I was in Boston I can search my history. Invasive continuous tracking adds no value for me.

Another way to achieve the same thing might be to take pictures at the locations you want to remember. The geo-tagging can help you locate where the pic was taken (though you'd probably need a pic of the name of the place for this to work well).

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