With the arrival of the new year the team of foursquare has made various changes to its privacy policy that will be applied from now on and they have issued a statement that we show you below in which all changes are explained in detail.
Of course, and how could it be otherwise, these changes will affect all of us who use the most famous social network based on geolocation on a Blackberry.
Here we show you the full statement issued by Foursquare:
Hello Foursquare Community!
2012 has been quite an intense year. We've released over fifty new features, welcomed nearly 15 million new people to Foursquare, and had our 3 billionth check-in. Saying this may sound cliché, but your support is really what keeps us going day after day.
As our product evolves, one of the things we do is update our policies accordingly. And an important aspect of that is privacy (something we think about a lot). This email presents several changes that we will be making to our privacy policy in the next month, and it explains how they affect you and what you can do about it.
We know that privacy policies can be dense, so we created a high-level document, which we consider our Basic Privacy Information. This document describes, in an easy-to-read format, how we incorporate privacy into our product. While it does not replace the legal need for a full description of our privacy practices (which you can read here), we hope it helps you better understand how we think about privacy. We also added new explanations of how privacy works through the app in our FAQ, including our default privacy settings and how they can be changed.
In addition to creating and refining those documents, we would like to point out two specific changes to our policy which will take effect on January 28, 2013.
1. Now we will show your full name. Sometimes today, Foursquare shows your full name and other times your first name and the initial of your last name (Juan Perez vs Juan P.). For example, if you search for a friend on Foursquare, their full name appears in the results, but when you enter their profile page, their last name does not appear. In the original versions of Foursquare, these distinctions made sense. But every day we get emails saying that it is confusing now. Therefore, with this change, the full names will be public. As always, you can change your full name on Foursquare at https://foursquare.com/settings.
2. A business on Foursquare will be able to see more about their recent customers. Currently, a business using Foursquare (like your coffee shop on the corner) can see customers who have checked in in the last three hours (plus their most recent and most loyal visitors). This is great for helping store owners identify their customers and provide more personal service or offers. However, a lot of businesses only have time to walk in and see this at the end of the day. So with this change, we will be showing you more of the most recent check-ins, instead of just every three hours. As always, if you'd rather not allow businesses to see when you check-in at their locations in the future, you can uncheck the Venue Information box at https://foursquare.com/settings/privacy.
The current Foursquare is very different from the first version that was released in 2009 and we thank you for allowing us to continue to evolve and build our vision. This sometimes means modifying our privacy policy. When we do, it is our priority to provide a clear way to help you understand your privacy choices and communicate them clearly. If you have any questions or would like more information, please refer to our updated privacy policy or support.foursquare.com.
Happy Holidays and thank you for being a part of the strong Foursquare community of nearly 30 million people. We have many plans for 2013
- The Foursquare Team
More information - Foursquare is updated
Source - en.foursquare.com