Apple Thoughts: Do You Share Your Location?

"Location-based services are going to have a hard time overcoming privacy fears and proving their worth."

The survey about privacy and sharing with location-based services was done by Microsoft, and it does reveal some interesting tidbits. Over 80% of those polled have never used a location-based service to tell others where they are, or to find the location of their friends, family etc. And of the roughly 20% that had used it, the most popular service was Google Latitude or Places at 52%, followed close behind by Facebook Places at 50%. Foursquare was only used by 15% of those users in the United States, and less in the other countries polled (Japan, Canada, UK and Germany). I am not too surprised that the "have-used" crowd was smaller than the "have-not" used crowd, but I didn't think the disparity would be that large between them. And for those that use those services, I would have thought that Foursquare, for all it's hype, would have had a greater percentage of users. I wonder just how many that said they didn't actually did but didn't know it. I guess the bigger point they are trying to make here is that people are just not comfortable putting that information out there yet. Personally I don't have too big a problem using Facebook Places every now and then, since I've vetted those that are my friends there, but there aren't too many on a regular basis that I do use other than that. How about you, any qualms about using these services and letting the 'Net know where you are?