With the roll out of Facebook Places to more locations across the globe (Ireland now being available as of last week) I am predicting there are many digital and social media agencies proposing programmes to make use of this opportunity to businesses for location based mobile marketing.

But what there is little coverage of is the impact of the launch of Facebook Places in terms of our personal privacy as it related to our own Facebook Personal Profile.

Facebook places enables you to ‘check into’ locations that you visit – many people use their mobile phone to engage on Facebook, and if Facebook is enabled in your country then you will see a ‘map pin’ with the words ‘Check in".

What you might not be aware of though is that this new facility which will offer us lots of benefits moving forward as businesses offer incentives and local deals, does need to be considered in the context of what information you want to make publicly available about your location an where-about.

You need to consider what is right for you – but if you want to change your privacy settings here are some things you might want to change.

1. When logged into Facebook at the top you will see ‘Account’

2. Click onto ‘Privacy Settings’

3. At the bottom left you will see ‘Customise Settings’ that you need to click on

4. Under the section ‘Things I Share’ adjust your settings to what you want it to reflect both in terms of who has access to see where you check into with Facebook Places and also review if you want to be included so that people will be able to see that you are at a location once you have ‘checked in’.

5. Under the section ‘Things Others Share’ adjust your settings if you want to disable people sharing your location – this however will mean that as Facebook deals gets rolled out there may be situations where you are not going to be available of any promotions offered by a business if their promotions are based on group offers.

Enabling this feature means that friends can tag you and ‘check’ you into a Place – you will get a notification to say a friend has tagged you and will will be able to remove the tag just as you can with photo tagging on Facebook.

6. Navigate back to the Privacy Settings Page and at the bottom you will see a link to ‘Apps and Websites’. This is an important area to review in terms of your security and information that is accessible to applications, games and websites when your friends use them.

Click ‘Edit Your Settings’ and then click the edit settings for the section ‘Information Accessible Through Your Friends’.

You can then decide if you want your friends to be able to share your current location and places that you check into when they are using applications.

As mentioned in point 5 – this will have an implication to what promotions you may be able to participate in as Facebook Deals launches (it is currently available in the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK).

While you are going through this process you might want to take the time to review your other privacy settings and also review or disable the access you allow applications to have to your personal data especially if you are not using those applications.

There is no doubt that Facebook Places and Facebook Deals can provide a great opportunity for both local businesses and consumers – however with each change that Facebook makes, it’s always worth taking the time to reflect what it means for us personally.

What do you think – is your privacy on Facebook important? Will you review your privacy settings?

Originally published at krishnade.com