July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Just as Path was beginning to put last year’s controversy over its access to user address books behind it, the social networking app is in hot water again over location data within images.

The Federal Trade Commission announced today that it has reached a settlement with Path, wherein the company will create a comprehensive privacy policy and receive privacy assessments for the next 20 years. Path will also have to pay an $800,000 fine over collecting information from children without parental consent.

But yesterday another privacy issue reared its head: Security researcher Jeffrey Paul noticed that Path will still use the location data within an image to geotag your posts, even if you’ve disabled the app’s access to your location within your iPhone’s settings.

“I don’t think it’s malice. I think it’s just carelessness,” Paul said in an interview with CNet. “But the net effect is the same to me. They have published information about me personally that I have expressly attempted to prevent them from publishing.”

Path product manager Dylan Casey responded to Paul’s discovery on his blog this afternoon:

Hey, Jeffery, thanks for alerting us to this. We take user privacy very seriously here at Path. Here is what we have discovered and how we are responding:

1. We were unaware of this issue and have implemented a code change to ignore the EXIF tag location.
2. We have submitted a new version with this fix to the App Store for approval.
3. We have alerted Apple about the concerns you’ve outlined here and will be following up with them.

One note to clarify: If a Path user had location turned off and an image was taken with the Path camera, Path does not have the location data. This only affected photos taken with the Apple Camera and imported into Path.

It certainly doesn’t sound like Path was maliciously trying to publish location data, but it’s a shame that a company that’s already been under privacy scrutiny overlooked this issue. It’s likely that plenty of other iOS apps have a similar loophole when it comes to location data, so Apple will have to issue some sort of fix down the line as well.

In a blog post today, published after the FTC decision but before this image location data issue, Path’s explanation over its settlement seemed bittersweet:

We want to share our experience and learnings in the hope that others in our industry are reminded of the importance of making sure services are in full compliance with rules like COPPA. From a developer’s perspective, we understand the tendency to focus all attention on the process of building amazing new things. It wasn’t until we gave our account verification system a second look that we realized there was a problem. We hope our experience can help others as a reminder to be cautious and diligent.

Photo: Path founder Dave Morin via Robert Scoble/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Give 2 Charity from location-analytics company Placed offers a new spin on digital giving.

By letting this new app track your location, you can earn points that work as donations to selected charities, including the American Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, and the Make-A-Wish foundation. The app is currently available for Android, and it’s coming to iOS soon.

Placed uses the location data for its analytics business, and it aggregates it with data from thousands of other users. It also promises it doesn’t share your data on an individual basis and doesn’t use it for ads. While the idea of constantly sharing your location data may seem like a massive invasion of your privacy, Placed may be able to convince consumers to look past that in order to help charities. (And, of course, its own collection of location data will become more valuable in the process.)

Using the Give 2 Charity app is pretty simple: Simply install it, go through a quick survey, and allow it to use the location services of your phone. Afterward, it’ll run in the background to poll your location data to earn points. You can also earn additional points by sharing points on social networks and recommending your friends to the app. You can choose to disable the location tracking for up to one week.

“Placed sees location is the new currency of mobile measurement, and Give 2 Charity is making that currency charitable,” said David Shim, Placed’s founder and chief executive, in an e-mail.  “This is one of the simplest and low friction ways for smartphone owners to help charities year round.”

Shim says he was inspired to create Give 2 Charity after launching Placed’s recent Panel app, which earns you points for rewards. People downloaded the Panel app more than 250,000 times since its launch in October, and he also noticed that users were eager to donate to charities once Placed added that feature.

“The launch of Give 2 Charity is to build upon that initial response, and reach a wider audience of people who want a simple way to give back to the world,” he said.

The Seattle-based Placed has raised around $3.4 million in funding from Madrona Venture Group and others. The company won the top prize for infrastructure startups at our MobileBeat innovation contest in July.

Image via Shutterstock

Facebook has updated the “Nearby” feature on its iOS and Android mobile apps, a move that could hurt Yelp and Foursquare in the location data wars.

While Facebook basically dropped out of owning check-ins, it still wants users to depend on its apps for everything they need, including finding places to eat, drink, shop, and more. Facebook has had a Nearby feature on iOS and Android, but before it was focused on showing people nearby. (A quick scan on my phone shows that hardly any of my friends check-in, so very few show up in the feature.)

But the new Nearby gets way more powerful by using friend check-ins to power recommendations around you and show great places to visit near you, both similar to what you get out of Foursquare. It also shows off business hours of places you look at, something you’d normally use Yelp for.

The company wrote in a blog post today:

Today we’re announcing updates to Nearby in the Facebook for iOS and Android apps that make it easy to discover new places your friends like.

From the app menu, open the tab to find local spots your friends have recommended, checked into, or liked. If you’re looking for a place to eat, choose a category like Restaurants to see what’s nearby. When you find a place that looks interesting, tap to see info like friends who’ve been there and business hours.

In addition to discovering new places to visit, you can share what you think by rating or recommending places to your friends. Your own suggestions become more personalized the more you and your friends rate, recommend, and check into places.

Facebook says that the Nearby feature is still fresh, so the results will get better as more people use it. The company also said it plans to include places info from third-party services “in the near future.”

The update to Facebook’s iOS and Android apps will be available later today.

Yelp investors don’t seem particularly enthusiastic about Facebook encrouching on Yelp’s territory, as Yelp’s stock is currently down 3.5 percent in late-day trading.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Microsoft has said its Windows Phone 7 devices are not keeping location data without alerting users.

Microsoft’s newest mobile operating system was the target of a lawsuit last week when security experts determined that Windows Phone 7 cameras were capturing location data any time owners took a photo and were, without alerting the user, allegedly sending that location data to Microsoft.

Microsoft has said any location data cannot be correlated with a specific user, which would ensure users’ privacy.

Privacy concerns about location tracking made news in April when a New York Times article revealed the dramatic extent of smartphone location tracking. Verizon said it would add Surgeon General-style warnings to its phones to make users aware that the carrier will be tracking their location. The move came as a response to inquiries from Congressman Joe Barton and Ed Markey, who were following up on the New York Times article.

Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint all admit to tracking user data in letters made public by the Congressman, but the carriers point out they’re required by federal to track location, since police rely on that data for investigative purposes. All of the carriers say they don’t share or sell the location information otherwise. Verizon says that it keeps the user data for seven years; AT&T says between several days and five years; Sprint says it holds onto data for three years; and T-Mobile was unclear about how long it keeps the information.

Via Winrumors

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Foursquare will be invading the Inq Cloud Touch, an Android phone that so far has been mostly known for its extensive Facebook integration.

On stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City today, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley announced that Foursquare will be the default location view for the phone, allowing users to take advantage of the service without ever installing an app.

Using the Foursquare API, the Cloud Touch phone will have most of the capabilities of the company’s app. You’ll be able to check-in as well as view nearby places, to-dos and tips.

It’s a smooth move for Foursquare, since the Cloud Touch has often been referred to as the “Facebook phone” thanks to its deep Facebook integration. Many had figured Facebook Places — the social network’s Foursquare competitor — would power Inq’s location data. But it looks like Inq is doing the smart thing and choosing the best service for its phone’s features instead of trying to shoehorn Facebook into every aspect of its devices. Update: Inq tells me that Facebook Places will continue to be a feature embedded in its phones. Users will be able to swipe between Facebook and Foursquare’s location data.

The Cloud Touch doesn’t yet have a US release date, but it could be popular here as an inexpensive Android device. An update that will enable the Foursquare integration will be made available to European and Asian Cloud Touch users in six weeks.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

CloudMade, a company that provides mapping data to 16,200 application developers, just announced that it has acquired German startup OneStepAhead.

I last spoke to CloudMade chief executive Juha Christensen when the company raised its second round of funding in July. At the time, he acknowledged that there are competitors (such as SimpleGeo) offering tools to create location apps, but he said CloudMade offers more than detailed data to power “hundreds of thousands of apps in different verticals.”

Yesterday, Christensen told me OneStepAhead’s technology advances that goal by managing the way mapping data is downloaded onto phones. That means CloudMade developers will be able to build apps where more of the data is stored on phones, so users can access maps when they’re offline. They’ll also use less mobile data since they’re not downloading maps again and again. OneStepAhead (which was self-funded) is based in Stuttgart, Germany, so that gives CloudMade an office near the German auto industry, which Christensen said has created a big market for location apps in that country.

Menlo Park, Calif.-based CloudMade has raised $15.7 million from Greylock Partners and Sunstone Capital. Its cofounder Steve Coast also cofounded the community mapping project OpenStreetMap, and CloudMade draws its data from its project. You can see some of the apps built on its platform at this website.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Factual, a startup that claims to host hundreds of thousands of data sets, has raised $25 million in its first round of institutional funding.

When I spoke to founder and chief executive Gil Elbaz more than a year ago, he had a big vision for the Los Angeles company — he wanted Factual to be the central repository for data on any subject you can think of. The company uses data mining tools to gather and structure public data from across the Web, and it also gets data from users and partners. (Developers get a discount on Factual’s data if they’re contributing data too.)

Today, Elbaz still sounded ambitious, but he acknowledged that Factual still has progress to make. Specifically, the company recently started to promote its location data to developers of mobile and Web-based location apps. Factual has already signed deals with large partners like Facebook (for its Places service in the United Kingdom and Japan) and location app-maker Booyah.

Factual raised the money from Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures, which already invested in the company’s $2 million angel funding. Making these deals helped convince investors that there’s a big opportunity here, Elbaz said — leading to the $25 million round (which is large for a Web startup’s first institutional round) and presumably to a large valuation as well.

Moving forward, Elbaz said he still wants to “go broad” and tackle lots of different data areas. At the same time, Factual needs to compete with startups that focus on specific types of data — on the location front that includes Localeze and SimpleGeo — so in the short-term, Elbaz said, ‘We’ll be picking off certain verticals where marketing dollars will prove effective.”

When I asked which areas he had in mind, he pointed to the Factual website, which highlights data in education, health, entertainment, and government.

We heard about the news from a tipster, and a Quova spokesperson confirmed the deal. The financial details were not disclosed, but Quova will continue to operate from its Mountain View, Calif. headquarters as a subsidiary of Neustar.

Founded in 1999, Quova helps online retailers, government agencies, and other organizations determine where their website visitors are located. That allows them to improve search results, fight online fraud, regulate digital content, and deliver geographically targeted advertising. Originally distributed as traditional software, Quova launched a Web-based version of its service in 2008.

The company has raised about $38 million in funding from Sequel Venture Partners, IDG Ventures, Mobius Venture Capital, and others.

Neustar, meanwhile, is a publicly traded business. The official description on the website is a bit hard to parse, but basically the company has amassed large databases that include telephone numbers, area codes, and website addresses — it’s the authoritative directory for the .us and .biz domains.