Do Geotagging and Presence Put Your Enterprise at Risk?

The National Weather Service (NWS) recently started a project that invites the Twitterverse to submit weather reports. The reports can be manually tagged with the Tweeter’s location, or automatically tagged using Twitter’s geotagging functionality. For anyone who’s watched a local weather reporter explain that today will be cloudy with a remote chance of rain, and then looked out the window at an active downpour, the promise of more accurate location-based weather reporting is appealing. And on the surface, what possible harm could come from letting the world know you’re in Old Orchard Beach, ME right now and the weather is perfect? Thinking beyond weather, though, consider an Executive retreat at a Twitter-friendly enterprise. Auto-geotagged Tweets could instantly update others on the precise location and current travel conditions for employees as they journey to the meeting. Add presence awareness to geotagging, and you can identify not only when one of your in-flight colleagues is back on the ground, but also if they’ve landed safely at their target destination or were unexpectedly re-routed to another airport.

Geo-location and presence have a myriad of positive uses for individuals and enterprises. But, as with many things, there is another side to consider: privacy and risk. Specifically, what are the mis-use cases for presence and geotagging?

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