Alleviating Google Latitude Privacy Concerns

Google's recently announced Latitude service has sparked a bit of concern among privacy advocates and the generally paranoid. I spoke with a Google Spokesperson about this.

Google Latitude is a feature in Google Maps for mobile and iGoogle that allows you to share your location with your family and friends in real time.

"Concerns have been raised about the possibility of the product being installed onto someone's mobile phone covertly," the spokesperson told me. "While many of the scenarios that have been described are unlikely, we take this issue seriously and always listen to feedback from our users. We already have a safety feature working on certain mobile devices that actively alerts users that Latitude is running and we are in the process of extending this notification to other mobile platforms supporting Google Latitude, which will be ready in the very near future."

She also told me that Google worked closely with Cindy Southworth of the Safety Net Project at the

You can also choose just how much information you wish to share with each friend. You can set different privacy levels for each friend. If you don't want to share your specific location with somebody, you can select "share only city level location." You can choose the "hide from this friend" option if you don't want them to see you at all. Or you can always remove friends altogether.

You can always choose what your location is and when you want to share it. You can manually select your location or you can hide from all of your latitude friends so nobody has a clue where you are.

The video above shows you how to adjust your privacy settings, and for more on using these settings, you can check out the