Privacy is an increasing concern in the era of the social web. Foursquare, a social location sharing service, is a prime place for people to be “over-sharing” due to the nature of announcing their location to the community. The present study sought to further past research on foursquare check-in behavior, stranger friending and privacy, specifically between male and female genders.

1. Privacy Perceptions and Gender Effects
on Foursquare Usage
Debra Gladwin, Kelsey Stroshane, Aishwarya Suresh, Tiffany Tsai, Joshua Chang
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15212
{debra.gladwin,kstroshane,saishwarya06@gmail.com, me@tiffanytsai.com, jmc1@cmu.edu}
ABSTRACT
Privacy is an increasing concern in the era of the social
web. Foursquare, a social location sharing service, is a
prime place for people to be “over-sharing” due to the
nature of announcing their location to the community. This
service also has rather relaxed privacy settings that
automatically allow users’ information to be visible to the
entire community. Furthermore, some studies have shown
that friending strangers is a common practice, despite
foursquare’s advice not to do it. The present study sought
to further past research on foursquare check-in behavior, as
well as stranger friending and privacy. Specifically, it was
attempting to determine whether males and females use
foursquare differently. Gender differences were found only
for stranger friending behavior. A number of interesting
trends were uncovered concerning privacy that indicate
users may not understand how their check-ins are being
shared. Several changes to foursquare are recommended
based on these results.
Author Keywords
Foursquare, location sharing, location based service, check-
in, privacy, strangers, social computing, mobile computing,
uses, sharing
ACM Classification Keywords
H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI):
Miscellaneous. J.4 Social and Behavior Sciences:
Sociology, Psychology
General Terms
Human Factors; Design; Security
INTRODUCTION
As the social realm proliferates across the web, privacy
concerns increase because users are putting a great deal of
personal information online. There are justifiable concerns
both about these social networking companies selling
personal information to third parties [14], as well as the
information reaching too wide of a population [6, 12]. One
of these social sites that encourages the sharing of a great
deal of personal information is the location-sharing service
foursquare. Foursquare is a site and app that allows users to
“check in” to various locations when they go there. If they
are the user that checks in at a location most often in a
certain time period, they earn the title of “Mayor” of that
location. There is also a system of friending, which allows
users to see each other’s check-ins and leave them
comments. Users may also appear on a list of people
publicly checked-in at a location, which is visible to all
users who also check-in there. Furthermore, users can link
their foursquare account to other social networking sites,
such as Facebook and Twitter, and can share personal
information such as email, telephone number, and a profile
picture. The sharing of this personal data, along with
information about a person’s whereabouts from check-ins,
has led to a number of privacy concerns with this service.
In 2010, a computer programmer in California managed to
release a list of 875,000 foursquare check-ins by gleaning
data from the public check-in lists [13]. Many of these
users never intended their check-ins to be public and were
not even aware that their check-ins were appearing on these
lists (this is a default setting on Foursquare [10]; see Image
1). There is also concern about the seeming ease with
which someone can stalk a foursquare user or find out that
their house is empty and rob them [6, 10]. Some people are
even friending strangers, making more of their information
available to an even wider audience [7]. Additionally, Rose
claims that the addition of location information to personal
information online can greatly increase the user’s risks [11].
RELATED WORK
There have been a number of previous studies examining
behavior and privacy on Foursquare as well as other
location-sharing services (LSS). In a study of many LSS,
Patil et al. found that 64.77% of participants were socially
motivated to check-in on these services [9]. This indicates
that friends and sharing are a very important part of
people’s use of these sites. Also, they found that more than
a quarter of participants had experienced some sort of regret
about at least one check-in, and over 30% of these people
said it was due to the audience for their check-ins being too
broad. Many indicated that they would like to limit, even
amongst their friends, who is able to see which check-ins.
Although there is a private check-in feature which allows
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2. users to check-in to location without sharing it with anyone,
there is no way for users to select some friends to see their
check-ins while others cannot.
Another study delved deeper into user motivations
specifically on foursquare, especially those concerning
motivations and privacy [7]. The majority of participants in
this study allowed themselves to be seen in the public list of
“who’s here” on foursquare, and 70% shared their email,
phone number, or linked to Facebook or Twitter.
Additionally, despite the amount of personal information
they are sharing, only 4% of participants had concerns
about stalkers.
A study by Cramer et al. explored user practices on
foursquare, including stranger friending behavior [3]. They
found that 21% of participants had friends who were
“people [they] didn’t know, who requested to be [their]
friend.” This indicates that users are both receiving friend
requests from people they do not know, and also accepting
these requests, at least in some cases. On the other hand,
62% of participants in this study indicated that they prefer
not to share with unknown people on foursquare.
Obviously, there is a divide here in feelings about privacy
on foursquare and how comfortable users are sharing with
unknown people. However, this study did not attempt to
examine the reason for this difference of opinions.
PRESENT WORK
The present study aimed to uncover more details about
foursquare users’ habits and feelings about privacy, as well
as potential reasons for differences in opinions and
behaviors. We hypothesized that the disparities in feelings
about privacy and friending strangers that previous studies
have found could be due to gender. Foursquare reports
their gender distribution to be 60% males and 40% females
[2], so this certainly has the potential to be the cause of two
different groupings of responses on questions concerning
security. Previous studies have only reported overall
statistics, rather than exploring specific causes of the
responses. The present study consists of three parts – fake
accounts, interviews, and surveys. The fake accounts were
a proposed study only and were intended to directly
examine users’ stranger-friending behavior. The interviews
and surveys asked participants about friending strangers,
privacy, and check-ins.
This research into the motivations for friending strangers is
especially important in today’s progressing digital age. As
more and more people use social media platforms to share
personal information, privacy concerns have become a large
issue. Previous research on foursquare users has found that
they have friends that they have not met face to face [7].
This finding is counterintuitive to expressed concerns
around privacy and the potential for stalking, especially as
the nature of foursquare use is location sharing. It also
raises the question of how these users maintain privacy, or
perhaps reconceive privacy, when broadcasting location to
people they do not know.
It is important to consider the basis for these privacy
concerns–or lack thereof–and expose the underlying social
mechanics at work. In the present research, we looked at
how people friend strangers (giving access to nearly all
their foursquare activity) with gender as our primary basis.
Determining differences in social friending behavior is of
importance to users in identifying privacy fallacy trends
within their use, and for addressing possible privacy issues
within foursquare. Further understanding this interaction
between users can give better insight into social trust
behavior based on gender, how individuals determine
possible social and societal stereotypes, and how friending
behavior on a social site might translate into societal
functions or business interactions.
FAKE ACCOUNTS
We proposed a study that would involve creating fake
accounts on foursquare and friending users in order to gain
first-hand evidence of how users will behave when
confronted with a friend request from a stranger. The main
research questions involved with this aspect of our research
were “Will people friend strangers of the same gender more
often than strangers of the opposite gender?” and “Will
people friend male or female strangers more often?”
Each of the team members would create two fake accounts,
one male profile and one female profile, and would check
in from each profile to locations near the Carnegie Mellon
University campus. These locations would be selected
randomly from a list of foursquare locations within a 5-mile
radius of the campus. Each profile would check in to two
locations per day for two weeks (the same locations for
paired accounts). At each check-in, four males and four
females would be randomly selected from the list of users
who left tips. The male profile would send friend requests
to two of the female users and two of the male users, while
the female profile would send friend requests to the
remaining four users. In total, this would result in sending
1,120 total friend requests. Data on friend request
acceptances could then be analyzed to determine gender
differences in friending behavior, especially whether users
are more likely to friend strangers of their own gender or
the opposite gender, and whether users overall were more
likely to accept requests from men or women.
This study was submitted to the Institutional Review Board
of Carnegie Mellon University, but was declined due to a
certain aspect of the foursquare usage policy, which states
that “You shall not provide any false personal information
to foursquare (including a false User Name) or create any
account for anyone other than yourself without such
person's permission.” There was the option for us to use
our own foursquare accounts in order to conduct this study.
However, we did not find this to be a viable option because
the team consisted of four females and only one male. Any

3. results we might have gotten would have been skewed by
the gender imbalance on our team, and therefore not have
been particularly meaningful or insightful.
Table 1. Comparison of locations to check-in or not
check-in for males and females.
INTERVIEWS
Method
We conducted individual structured interviews either in-
person or over the phone. The interview consisted of 19
questions about foursquare activity, friending strangers,
check-ins, and privacy. Participants were recruited via
word-of-mouth.
Participants
We interviewed 17 participants, all students at Carnegie
Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They were
between the ages of 18 and 25 (average age = 21.4),
consisting of 7 females and 10 males. Their average
number of foursquare friends was 42, average time on
foursquare was 10.3 months, and average number of check-
ins per day was 2.5.
Results and Discussion
Regarding check-ins, we asked our users who could see
their check-ins, where they do and do not check-in and
why, and their knowledge of the private check-in feature.
From their responses, we categorized the locations into
bars, convenience stores, fast food restaurants, restaurants,
academic buildings, coffee houses, home, and attraction
sites. Motivations behind these check-ins consisted of
increasing points, gathering badges, fighting for mayorship,
documenting where they have been, and letting their friends
know where they are. In comparison, places that
participants report not checking into include work, school,
home, and convenience stores. The participants that
reported these locations explained that they felt these
locations were not interesting, it felt redundant, they forget,
or it is tedious. From these responses, we found interesting
comparisons in terms of gender and check-in vs. not check-
in locations (see Table 1). Out of the 13 people who said
they check in at home, ten of them are female. In
comparison, out of the five reported instances of people not
checking in at home, four of them are male. We saw
similar values for academic buildings. Of the 27 check-ins
reported, 14 are female participants while four out of five
who do not check-in here are males.
Additionally, we asked all of our participants if they had
ever sent or received friend requests from strangers. Out of
our 17 participants, only one (a male) reported ever
accepting a friend request from a stranger. Likewise, the
same participant had also sent a friend request to a stranger.
We asked participants how willing they would be to accept
a friend request from a stranger in the future. The general
consensus amongst our participants (except the participant
noted above) is that they are unwilling to friend a stranger.
On average, 47% of the participants’ foursquare friends
were people they interacted with in real life. However, we
did not fully define stranger, and it may be that these other
53% were just friends of friends or friends who lived in
other cities.
In terms of privacy, we looked at concerns our participants
had, what their comfort levels are, if they customized
privacy settings, who can see their check-ins, and if they
felt they needed more control over privacy settings. Of our
participants, 88% of them reported having default privacy
settings (see Image 1). Out of the 88%, 80% believe only
their friends can view their check-ins while maintaining
default privacy settings. However, this is a misconception.
The default privacy settings allow a user’s check-ins to
appear in the public list of people checked in at a location.
This means that in addition to friends, anyone who also
checked into the same place can see their check-in there.
Only two of our 17 participants reported having some
privacy concerns. Furthermore, we found that none of our
participants had read Foursquare’s privacy policy and 70%
of our users did not know of the private check-in feature.
Lastly, we asked our participants to read the privacy policy
and report their level of comfort after. Our participants did
not seem affected and reported the same comfort level after
reading it.
Image 1. Default foursquare privacy settings.
Male Female
Check-In Bar: 5/6
Convenience store:
5/6
Restaurant: 8/11
Coffee house: 4/6
Attraction site: 7/9
Fastfood: 4/7
Home: 10/13
Academic: 14/27
Don’t
Check-In
Academic: 4/5
Home: 4/5
Convenience store:
3/6
Doctors: 1/1
Convenience
store: 3/6

4. SURVEYS
Method
The survey we distributed consisted of questions about
friending strangers, where participants check-in, and their
feelings about and changes to privacy settings. The survey
was created using Google Forms and participants filled it
out online. It was designed such that some questions would
be presented to participants only if they had previously
answered “Yes” to a question (such as in the instance of
sending or accepting a friend request from a stranger). All
but two questions were multiple choice. They ranged in
number of answers available, and several questions allowed
for multiple responses (which was indicated in the survey).
Participants were recruited through Mechanical Turk,
Craigslist, Foursquare forums, and Facebook. Participants
recruited from Mechanical Turk were compensated $0.20
for their participation. No other participants were
compensated
Participants
We received 135 responses (59 females, 76 males) for our
survey. These proportions are consistent with foursquare’s
reported 60% male, 40% female demographics [2]. The
average number of foursquare friends for males was 47 and
the average for females was 32. Our participants’ ages
ranged from 18-55+. Thirty-nine participants were 18-24,
forty-four were 25-29, twenty-four were 30-34, thirteen
were 35-39, seven were 40-44, two were 45-49, four were
50-54, and two were over 55. Seventy-five of the
participants were Asian, 41 were Caucasian, 14 were other,
3 were Hispanic, and 2 were African-American.
Additionally, our participants range from being new
foursquare users to more established users. The majority of
our participants (44) had been using foursquare for over a
year, 39 had been using it for 0-3 months, 30 for 4-6
months, 15 for 7-9 months, and 7 for 10-12 months.
Number of check-ins per day ranged from less than once a
day to more than 10 times a day. Users were mainly
clustered around less than once a day, 1-2 times, and 3-4
times a day, with fewer users indicating that they checked
in more than that each day. Male participants had an
average of 47 foursquare friends, and females had an
average of 32 foursquare friends.
Friending Strangers
The first portion of our survey posed questions about
participants’ attitudes toward sending and receiving friend
requests from foursquare users they do not know. We first
asked participants if they had ever sent a friend request to
someone they did not know. There was a significant
difference between the responses of men and women on
this question (χ2
= 12.07, p = 0.0005). 61% of male
respondents said that they had sent a friend request to
someone they did not know, while only 31% of females had
(see Figure 1). Ninety-five percent of these friend requests
were accepted for both males and females. We also asked
Figure 1. Male and female responses to the question
“Have you ever sent a friend request to
someone you did not know?”
Figure 2. Male and female responses to the question
“Did you accept the friend request from
a person you did not know?”
participants who had friend requested a stranger a number
of follow-up questions to determine more details about their
reasons for this and interactions with the stranger. The
majority of participants (76%) had interacted with the
stranger online by liking check-ins or leaving comments.
There was not a significant difference between responses of
males and females on this question (χ2
= 0.36, p = 0.55).
Participants were also asked why they had sent the friend
request (they could select more than one response). The
most popular response for females was that the stranger had
interesting check-ins (61%). Male responses were fairly
evenly spread across interesting check-ins (46%), similar
check-ins to them (48%), and good tips (37%).
Eighty percent of participants had received a friend request
from a person they did not know. Although the percentages
of males and females who had received friend requests
from strangers did not differ significantly, their responses
on the question “Did you accept the friend request from the
person you did not know?” were quite different (see Figure
2). The results from this question were almost exactly
N = 135
p = 0.0005
N = 108
p = 0.036

5. opposite between men and women, revealing a statistically
significant difference in responses for the two genders (χ2
=
4.4, p = 0.036). 60% of men responded “Yes” to this
question, but only 39% of women responded “Yes.”
There were no significant differences between genders on
responses to any of the follow-up questions about accepting
friend requests from strangers, so the remaining results will
largely be presented for all participants, rather than divided
by gender. “Good tips” were the least popular reason to
accept a friend request from a stranger (24%), while
interesting check-ins and similar check-ins were
approximately equal (54% and 59%). After accepting the
friend request, 80% of participants had interacted with the
stranger by liking check-ins or commenting, and 56% had
interacted with them on other social sites, such as Twitter or
Facebook. Although a larger percentage of male
respondents (51%) than female respondents (39%) had met
the stranger in person after becoming their foursquare
friend, the difference was not statistically significant (χ2
=
0.74, p = 0.39).
We also attempted to explore feelings about friending
strangers from all participants, including those who had not
previously friended a stranger. We asked, “In the future,
how open would you be to accepting a friend request from
someone you don’t know?”
Overall, men were more open
to accepting friend requests from stangers than women (see
Figure 3). 41% of women indicate they are “not very open”
or “not at all open”, whereas only 26% of men indicated
either of those responses. In contrast, 56% of men indicated
that they were “somewhat open” or “very open” to
accepting a stranger’s friend request, and only 39% of
women selected one of these options. Men seem to be more
receptive to accepting a stranger’s friend request than are
women.
Figure 3. Male and female responses to the question “In
the future, how open would you be to accepting a friend
request frome someone you do not know?”
Figure 4. Male and female responses to the question
“How many of your foursquare friends do you consider
personal friends, whom you see outside
of the online community?”
The last question we asked participants in this section
pertained to the makeup of their foursquare friends: “How
many of your foursquare friends do you consider personal
friends, whom you see outside of the online community?”
We hoped to get an idea as to whether participants’
relatively open attitudes towards strangers’ friend requests
was reflected in the demographics of their total friends.
Our results do not indicate a significant difference between
the proportion of personal friends amongst men’s and
women’s foursquare friends, with 76% of women having
half or more of their foursquare friends being personal
friends, and 71% of men having half or more of their
foursquare friends being personal friends (see Figure 4).
Check-Ins
Our survey also looked at the places that users do and do
not check in and their motivations behind this. Our results
support previous findings that users of foursquare are
socially motivated [7, 9]. There was little difference
between most responses of males and females for any of the
questions in this section.
We began by asking how often they check-in to each of the
following locations when they go there: Home, Work,
Store, Restaurant, Bar, Fast Food Place, School, Friend’s
House, Convenience Store, and Landmark/Park/Museum.
Males were more likely to check-in at home, with 46%
stating that they very often check-in there, compared to
only 32% of females. Additionally, 22% of females said
that they never check-in at home, whereas only 12% of
males said this. When it comes to checking in at work,
36% of males check-in very often, whereas 34% of females
rarely check-in at work. At the store, only 7% of females
very often check in, whereas 28% of males check in here
very often. Males and females were both approximately
evenly divided between often/sometimes and rarely/never
checking in at restaurants. 30% of males will very often
check-in at a bar, whereas only 20% of females responded
this way. For fast food places, females were evenly split
between sometimes, rarely, and never checking in, with half
N = 135
N = 135

6. as many very often checking in there. Males were slightly
more likely to check-in here, with responses evenly spread
across all four options. Males were relatively unlikely to
check-in at school, with 33% responding that they never
check-in there, compared to 22% of females. 22% of males
very often check-in at a friend’s home, whereas only 8% of
females very often do. About a quarter of both men and
women never check-in at friends’ homes. Merely 4 females
(7%) check-in very often at convenience stores, but 20 men
do (26%). Very often was the most popular male response
for checking in at landmarks/parks/museums (33%),
whereas never and very often were nearly tied for women
(29% and 27% respectively). These results indicate that
women may be less likely to check-in to locations such as
convenience stores, fast food places, and bars.
We also explored participants’ motivations for checking in.
Responses to the question of “What motivates you to
check-in at a location?” were nearly identical for males and
females, so results will be presented in an aggregated form
(users were able to select more than one response to this
question). To earn badges and mayorships was the most
popular reason (56%), with getting discounts from
businesses and sharing location with friends for socializing
close behind (44% and 45% respectively). Users also
indicated that they use it to show that they go to interesting
places (35%), to keep track of there they have been (29%),
meet new people who have checked in at the same place
(27%), to communicate their location to friends for safety
reasons (26%), and because they get auto checked-in (9%).
This indicates that the game aspect of foursquare is quite
effective at getting people to check-in, which could be the
reason it has succeeded while so many other location based
services have failed. Discounts and socialization are also
important motivators for people checking in.
Additionally, participants were asked about places where
they go but do not check-in. Eighty-eight participants
(65%) do not check-in or check-in privately to some
locations. Users who indicated that they do not check-in
were also asked to select locations from a list where they go
but do not check-in (users could select multiple options).
Figure 5. Male and female responses to the question
“What places do you NOT check-in at?”
(multiple responses possible for each participant)
By far, the doctor was the most common place for females
to not check-in, with 47% indicating that they never check
in there (see Figure 5). The doctor and home were evenly
tied for places that males do not check-in (both 48%).
Seven males and nine females also selected “Other” for
places they go but do not check-in. A free responses entry
was provided for this selection. Of those who selected
other, two wrote church or religious location, three wrote
friends’ houses, one said party, one said court/legal
services, one said shops, and one said park (for run).
When asked why they did not check-in at a location or used
the private check-in feature (users could select multiple
answers), both males’ and females’ primary reason was not
wanting certain people to find them and bother them (35%
and 39% respectively). It being a boring location was
another common reason to not check-in, with 39% of
females and 29% of males not checking in for this reason.
Beyond this, responses were relatively evenly spread, with
20-30% of females and males indicating that they did not
check-in because of embarrassment, forgetting, feeling
unsafe, and not wanting to spam others with their check-ins.
Privacy
In order to gain a deeper understanding of participants’
feelings and concerns about privacy, we asked them nine
questions about the privacy policy and their settings. 54%
of the participants indicated that they had read the privacy
policy, but only 21% of them felt that they understood it
“very well.” On the other hand, 17% of participants said
that they understood it “very poorly.” We also asked them
how well they thought they understood the privacy policy
in comparison to their foursquare friends. The most
popular answer for women was that they understood “about
the same as their friends” (51%). For men the most
common answer was “somewhat better than my friends”
(39%), with “about the same as my friends” in a close
second (36%).
We also asked participants a number of questions about
their privacy settings. Seventy percent of our participants
had customized their privacy settings in some way. Making
email or phone not visible was by far the most popular
privacy setting for users to change, with 68% of those
participants who had modified their privacy settings
changing that (see Figure 6). 37% of these participants had
unlinked their Facebook account, and 32% had elected to
not be included in the public list of people checked-in at a
location. If you consider these findings in terms of all our
participants, including those who have changed no privacy
settings, this means that only 22% of all our participants are
not included in the public list of people checked in to the
location. This indicates that the large majority (78%) of our
participants are sharing their check-ins with anyone who
views a venue they have been to. However, when we asked
participants if their current privacy settings allowed people
who are not their friends to see their check-ins, only 42%
said “Yes.” Forty-six participants (34%) answered “No” to
N = 88

7. Figure 6. Responses to the question “What privacy
settings have you changed?” (multiple responses
possible for each participant)
Figure 7. Male and female responses to the question
“Do your current privacy settings allow people who are
not your friends to see your check-ins?”
this question, when in fact, according to previous answers,
there are only 30 participants (22%) whose check-ins are
not on the public list of people checked-in at a location.
Obviously there is a problem or misunderstanding here – it
may be that users are unaware that automatic privacy
settings allow their check-ins to be on the public list, or that
they do not understand what that list actually is. Also, there
were some differences in response between the genders for
this question. 50% of males responded that their check-ins
were visible to people who were not their friends, whereas
only 31% of females responded this way. However, due to
the previous findings indicating that users are not actually
aware of their check-ins being public, we cannot know
whether these differences are actual or just perceived by the
users.
We also asked users whether they utilize the private check-
in feature available on foursquare. When a user privately
checks in to a location, their check-in is only visible to
them. It is not visible to their friends and will not be
included on the public list of people checked in at a
location. Of all the male participants, 28 (37%) said that
they “rarely” privately check-in, and 20 (26%) said that
they “sometimes” privately check-in. Females had a
similar distribution of responses to this question, with 17
(29%) “rarely” checking-in privately, and 18 (31%)
“sometimes” checking-in privately. Additionally, we
questioned participants about how comfortable they were
checking in with their current privacy settings. Men were
slightly more comfortable, with only 6% indicating that
they were somewhat or very uncomfortable, compared to
15% of female participants who selected one of these
responses.
Finally, we allowed users to give free response answers to
the question “Would you change anything about the privacy
settings options to enable more or less control over your
information?” While many people responded “No,” we
also got a number of interesting responses. Three
respondents indicated they would like to be able to block
specific people or decide which friends see which check-
ins. This is consistent with the findings of [9] that 30% of
participants experienced regret from a check-in because the
audience on foursquare was too wide. Another participant
said, “I’d always like more control, even if I don’t use it.”
Others said, “To know less information about me!” and, “I
don’t want others to access my personal information.”
Obviously, at least some users would like more control over
their privacy on foursquare. There were also users who
seemed unconcerned about privacy settings though, such as
the ones who said, “No idea, I don’t know anything about
the privacy settings” and, “I am pretty sure they have our
interest at hand.”
CONCLUSION
Overall, we uncovered a number of interesting findings
about foursquare privacy, stranger friending, and check-ins,
extending previous work done in this area. We found
gender differences, but the only significant ones were for
sending friend requests to strangers and accepting friend
requests from strangers. Males were significantly more
likely to both send a friend request to a stranger and accept
a friend request from a stranger. Interestingly, once a
stranger had been friended, the genders did not differ
significantly in terms of whether they had interacted with
the stranger. It seems that once a female user has reached
the “threshold” of being willing to be friends with someone
they do not know, they are just as likely as a male to
interact with that person. However, there is some level of
concern raised about the large percentage of participants
who are becoming friends with strangers. Foursquare
suggests on their site for users to not friend anyone they do
not know, but users are continuing to do this. Even
females, who are generally considered in society to be more
at risk from strangers and also more private, are friending
strangers. Foursquare needs to be more proactive in letting
users know the dangers of friending unknown people, rather
than just lightly suggesting it in one area of their site. Users
are sharing a great deal of personal information that could
N = 95
N = 135

8. put them at risk when their network grows beyond close
friends.
Another finding that was interesting was that 39% of
females and 51% of males had met a stranger in person
after becoming their foursquare friend. Although this could
also be considered to be a rather risky practice, we find it
interesting in comparison to concerns about loneliness
arising from the use of social networks. In a piece for the
The Atlantic, Marche suggests that the use of social
networks such as Facebook may be making us more lonely,
rather than more connected [8]. He cites research
indicating that we are meeting fewer people and gathering
with others in person less often, because we are always
utilizing social networks to follow the lives of others, rather
than actually participating. However, our data indicate that
foursquare may be breaking free of this conundrum of
social networks. Nearly half our participants indicated that
they are motivated to check-in to a location in order to
share their location with friends for socializing. And over a
quarter check-in to a location in order to meet new people
who check-in to the same location. Also, nearly half of
participants who had accepted a friend request from a
stranger have since met that new friend in person. So, it
seems that rather than distancing people from their friends,
foursquare may actually be bringing them closer by
allowing them to know each other’s locations. It also
appears to be helping at least some people make new
friends – and not just “virtual” friends, but friends that they
are actually meeting and spending time with in person.
Another interesting finding was people’s willingness to
share their location, but not their email or phone number.
Foursquare at its core is a way to share your location with
other people, so by being on the site users are implicitly
implying that they are okay with sharing their location.
Also, we saw that many people were friending strangers,
indicating that they were comfortable sharing their location
with people they did not know. In addition, many users’
check-ins were viewable on the list of public check-ins at a
location (whether they realized it or not). However, despite
this strong willingness to share their physical location,
potentially with complete strangers, nearly half of all our
participants had made their phone number or email not
visible. We found it quite surprising that people are willing
to share their personal physical location, but not their
seemingly less private email and phone number.
Conceivably, sharing one’s physical location with strangers
puts one at more risk than sharing email or phone number,
which is often publicly available anyways, and does not
allow a stranger to learn much about you. Although our
results do not provide us with a reason for this finding, we
have some speculation as to the explanation for it. Other
studies and articles have indicated that people generally
have relatively high concerns about their privacy, especially
in terms of companies having their information and using it
in ways that the users are unaware of [4, 11, 14]. For
instance, Fisher et al. found that users were willing to grant
GPS location access to some apps but not others, depending
on their level of trust of the app and whether they knew
why it needed their location [4]. We think that this
disparity in willingness to share could be due to issues of
control. We agree with boyd that “privacy is about having
control over how information flows” [1]. Because users of
foursquare are electing to check-in to a location, they have
control over this information flowing out into the world.
However, when they leave their email or phone number
visible, they have no control over who can see this
information or what they can do with it. It may be that if
more people realized that they were on the public list of
check-ins they would be less willing to share their location.
Several users also indicated that they would like to be able
to choose which friends they share certain check-ins with,
which is another indicator of users’ desire for control over
the flow of their information.
Our findings about why users do not check in to certain
locations may be interesting for foursquare itself. One of
the main reasons for not checking in at a location was that
users did not want certain people to find them there. This,
along with the sentiments people expressed about wanting
to be able to share location with selective friends indicates
that users would like more control over who their check-ins
are shared with. We suggest that foursquare include a
feature that allows users to select which friends can and
cannot see a certain check-in, or allow them to group
friends (similarly to Google+), and selectively share with
certain groups. Another popular reason for not checking in
was that the location was boring. Although foursquare
makes checking in “fun” via the game that includes
mayorships and badges, this is obviously not enough for all
locations. Foursquare may be able to encourage check-ins
to more locations by making “boring” locations more
exciting to check in to, such as by giving extra rewards for
check-ins there, or adding points to some other type of
competition. We feel that this possibility warrants more
exploration as a possibility for foursquare to encourage
more check-ins at a wider variety of locations.
FUTURE WORK
In the future, this work could be extended to discover even
more about foursquare user behavior. The most important
thing we feel should be explored is exactly who people are
friending when they friend strangers. This was the goal of
our proposed research study, as we would be collecting data
about which genders friend which genders, and whether
users friend males or females more often. The results from
our study indicate that there is not a significant difference
between the proportion of friend requests from females and
males that are accepted (the majority are accepted for both).
However, this data is not conclusive, and we hope that in
the future our proposed study can be conducted using actual
accounts in order to obtain more robust data concerning
who the strangers are that people are friending.

9. Furthermore, it would be interesting to find the reasons for
the gender differences that we found when it comes to
sending and accepting friend requests from strangers. This
research would likely delve deeper into the realms of
psychology than we have gone here, but could provide
important insights into differences between males and
females when it comes to willingness to friend strangers.
Future research could also investigate whether there are
cultural or age differences in the behaviors examined here.
The majority of our participants were Asian (with
Caucasian in a distant second), and it is possible that this
played into the results that we found. Since our sample was
not proportional in terms of ethnicity and we did not know
what country our participants were living in, we elected to
not perform analysis based on culture or ethnicity. It would
be interesting to see whether people from different cultures
(especially western vs. eastern culture) are more or less
open about privacy and friending strangers. The fact that
the results of our interview, which was conducted entirely
in the United States at a university, were quite different
from those of our survey indicates to us that there may be
cultural or age differences playing a part in the results we
found.
Finally, our study only examined users of foursquare and
their privacy concerns. It would be valuable, especially to
foursquare itself, to study people who do not use
foursquare, especially those who have consciously and
actively made the decision not to sign up and use this
service. We found less privacy concerns than we were
expecting, considering the amount of information being
shared on this service. It may be that the people with
significant privacy concerns are not actually using
foursquare due to these concerns. It could be quite
beneficial to foursquare to discover if people are
uncomfortable with the level of information they would
have to share in order to use this service. From these
results, foursquare may be able to alter and increase their
privacy settings in order to encourage a larger number of
people to adopt their service.
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http://www.fastcompany.com/1675626/.
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check-in: Emerging practices, norms, and ‘conflicts’ in
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