The First Thing You Should Do With Facebook Places: Don’t Let Other People Tag You

So, everyone’s excited about the new Facebook Places, right? The Facebook service that lets you check in, Foursquare style, at whatever hip sushi bar or bicycle repair shop you happen to be in. Oh, and also other people can check you in too.

Facebook places, which rolls out this evening, allows your friends (and only your friends) to tag you when checking into a place, much as they might tag you in a picture. This is terrible! Here are just three situations we thought of directly off the top of our head where someone else tagging you could be social doom:

• You are at the bar when you are supposed to be at your girlfriend’s crappy art show. Your friend Jane sees you and you chat. She checks into the bar and tags you: “At this awesome bar, just talked to [Your name here]about his Star Wars memorabilia collection!” Your girlfriend sees this on Jane’s wall and dumps you.
• You call in sick to work so you can go to a Star Wars convention. You get a ride to the convention centre with your buddy. Your buddy checks into the convention centre: “At this awesome convention centre with [your name here]for the Star Wars convention!” Your boss is friends with your buddy Ron because they met at yoga class. Your boss sees this on Ron’s wall. You are fired.
• You are having an affair with your wife’s sister. Your wife’s sister checks into her home and says “Having awesome sex with [Your name here] “. Your wife sees this on her sister’s wall and divorces you. Also, your wife is your boss and she fires you, then trashes your Star Wars memorabilia collection.

That last one is not very probable, but you get the point! Of course, you are notified whenever anyone tags you in a check-in, and you can always delete a tag. But still. You’re probably not checking in because either a) you don’t want people to know where you are; or b) you spent all your money on Star Wars memorabilia and can’t afford a smartphone, so you won’t see that someone’s tagged you until you get home anyway.

At the Facebook places launch event, an engineer equated tagging someone in a check-in with tagging someone in a picture. Not quite the same thing. Someone has to point a thing at you and take your picture. But anyone can go to the bathroom, tag you in a check-in, then your spouse/boss sees it and: boom. Your life is ruined. Also, a picture does not tell someone exactly where you are, with whom, when and whether you are having an awesome time, despite the fact that you should be at your girlfriend’s terrible art openings.

Disable the “let your friends tag you” feature as soon as possible. (It should be right there somewhere in your privacy settings tonight.) For the love of your Star Wars memorabilia collection.

Republished from Defamer.