14 DAY TRIAL // Flickr has debuted a really interesting privacy feature for geotagged photos. Yes, it's hard to be believe that anything having to do with both geotagging and privacy can be interesting, but Flickr has done it. It calls it geofencing and the feature, essentially, sets different location privacy settings for photos, depending on where they were taken.
For example, if you take a photo at your house, only your Family will be able to see where it is, if you set up the feature that way.
So far, the same geo privacy setting you selected by default was applied to all photos. You could change it for each individual photo, but this was tedious if you had to do it very often.
"Managing geo privacy by hand is tedious and error prone. Geofences make it easier," Flickr explained on its developers blog.
"Geofences are special locations that deserve their own geo privacy settings. Simply draw a circle on a map, choose a geo privacy setting for that area, and you’re done," the post explained.
"Existing photos in that location are updated with your new setting, and any time you geotag a photo in that area, it gets that setting too," it said.
"Geofences are applied at upload time, or when you geotag a photo after uploading it," it added.
The new feature is brilliant in its simplicity. What's more, the best thing about it is that it means less work for users, always a plus, while they're also protecting their privacy better. Usually, it's the other way around.
But now that the feature has been enabled for all, the next obvious step, would be to extend it to apply to all privacy settings. For example, based on geofences you create, photos could only be seen by your contacts, or just your friends, which would be a lot more useful, than just adjusting the location privacy setting.