App Limits Users’ Oversharing

Are you a textbook oversharer? Do your friends and family ever tell you that you’re posting way too much information online? Do random strangers ever walk up to you in public and ask how your dinner was last night? #Awkward.

Okay, that last one might be a little extreme, but most of us can relate to oversharing a bit too much on social media websites like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. While oversharing has been a problem since the early days of the internet, social media makes it that much easier to share a little too much. But when you add in the smartphone to the mix, things get ever more complicated.

Oversharing with a smartphone doesn’t always have to do with what you actually type or upload into a status update. When you download an app, you give many of them access to your location without thinking about it twice, and when it comes to social media, when you post frequently, your friends (and potentially strangers) not only know what you’re up to but also where you are. A new app is designed to change that.

Linke Gut, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Binghamton University in upstate New York, and a team of researchers have created a smartphone app that is designed to hide the user’s location. The app is Anti-GPS, and it won a “best paper” award at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) GLOBECOM Conference, Symposium on Communication & Information System Security in San Diego.

While the app is not yet available to the public, it does contribute to a much larger conversation about security and oversharing with your smartphone. How do you limit how much you share? Do you have any tips for maintaining a semblance of privacy online? Let us know in the comments below.