Facebook app lets users tell friends exact location

'places' works like networking site Foursquare — but comes with strict privacy controls

London: Amid security concerns, social networking site Facebook has launched a new application 'Places' in the UK that would allow users to share their location with friends. This new feature works similar to the location based social networking site Foursquare, but contains strict privacy controls. The service was launched in the US last month and is one of a new raft of social networking services that use the GPS function on many smartphones to work out exactly where a person is at any point.Facebook Places also tells users which of their friends are at the same location or if they have ever 'checked in' there before. It lets users tell their friends when they have 'checked in' to a location and meet other people who are also checked in there too. This information then appears on the news updates for all of your Facebook friends. "Facebook is a place to share information with people you know," the Daily Mail quoted Facebook product manager Michael Sharon as saying. "We saw people were already using the site to tell people where they are, so the natural thing was to build a product to make this easier. This just formalises what people were doing anyway," he said. Facebook has been under scanner for its attitude towards privacy and so has installed a set of stringent new rules for its Places application. Facebook Places is opt in unlike other 'always on' services, and a user's location is not stored unless they check in or accept a tag from a friend. Check-ins are defaulted to friends-only rather than everyone on Facebook. The system works in a similar way to the way photos are tagged in Facebook so when you are tagged as 'checked in' by a friend you can also choose to untag yourself. Many Germans opt out of Google Street View Berlin: Hundreds of thousands of Germans have requested their homes be kept out of Google's Street View mapping service, a German magazine reported. Citing company sources, weekly Der Spiegel said "several hundred thousand" tenants had already objected to inclusion in the Google service, which uses camera-equipped fleets of cars to take panoramic pictures of cities for its online atlas. The firm itself would not give concrete figures, it added. The German government has been critical of Street View and said it will scrutinise Google's promise to respect privacy requests by letting people stay out of the project. German opponents have until Oct 15 to apply for an opt-out. Google, the world's no 1 search engine, plans to add Germany's 20 largest cities to Street View by the end of 2010, joining 23 countries already included. The US company said human faces and license plates would be blurred.