The line between technology and personal privacy has been getting thinner and blurrier over the last few years, and now the NameTag app looks set to shake things up even more than Google Glass.
The app allows you to link up all of your social networks to
the one thing they have in common: your face. Other users will be able to snap
a photo of you with their phone (or Google Glass) if they spot you out in the
real world, as opposed to online, and instantly find you across all of those
networks. You can even add an About Me bio to introduce yourself to anyone who
looks you up.
"Using the NameTag smartphone or Google Glass app, simply snap a pic of someone you want to connect with and see their entire public online presence in one place."
In a way it streamlines the internet stalking that everyone’s
been known to participate in once in a while, but there’s a scary new element.
By having NameTag activated anyone who crosses your path – like a random person
in the park or bar – can find out your name, hometown and job instantly,
without even speaking to you. At least right now you have to give your name to
someone before they can look you up.
But there are some controls: you can set NameTag to only show your LinkedIn profile, for example, when you’re at work, but add your Facebook, Twitter, hobbies and relationship status when you’re out with friends.
It helps, but for us that’s not reassuring enough. It would
be all too easy for a stranger to come over and pretend that they recognise you
from university or that you once met through a mutual friend: they could easily
find all the information that they needed through your NameTag account, before
you even noticed them.
On the flip side, several digital developers are using new
technology to reverse the no-privacy trend. Cloak, “the anti-social network” is
a new app that actually helps you avoid
seeing people that you’re friends with online. Using geo data from their recent
posts, it will alert you to any nearby friends so that you don’t have to bump
into them if you don’t want to.
Its creators told The Daily Beast that they wanted to
explore “the nascent trend of anti-social stuff. We wanted to put this out
there and see how people took to it – and the response has been overwhelming.
We posted the app to Facebook on Monday morning and since then, we’ve added
over 100,000 users and hit the top 50 of the App store.”
It’s a clever flipside on the over-saturated feed of online
status updates and humble-brags, and one which could be an interesting tie-in
to the normcore trend that’s sweeping across fashion at the moment.
Have we finally reached bursting point when it comes to
knowing everything about our friends’ lives, all the time, or are we ready to
start digitally stalking strangers without even speaking to them? It’s two very
different ways of looking at social media, but both options indicate that a
huge change is on its way.
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