Facebook's new "Places" have been a long time coming, and privacy groups were ready to pounce when the company finally announced the location-based feature. Several privacy advocates say that the settings are unnecessarily complex and that users could have certain personal info exposed without their consent.

"There is no single opt-out to avoid location tracking; users must change several different privacy settings to restore their privacy status quo," the Electronic Privacy Information Center said in a statement on its website. The organization also notes that it and many other consumer privacy organizations still have complaints pending with the FTC over Facebook's "unfair and deceptive trade practices, which are frequently associated with new product announcements."

Indeed, there are multiple settings (that are not all grouped together) in which a user must specify his or her preferences when it comes to Places, making it slightly more confusing than necessary. However, there's one Places-related situation that is not even controllable via settings, and could expose people's addresses to the world.

Sex blogger and educator Violet Blue posted a transcript of Facebook's announcement wherein Zuckerberg was questioned over whether users can remove their homes as a "place" if others have added it to the database without the user's consent (during a party, for example). The response is fumbling at best—a Facebook engineer said that people should only be adding places that are public, duh—and Zuckerberg said the only recourse is to flag it for removal. However, if only one user flags an item, it's unlikely to be removed, therefore exposing a user's address to anyone else on Facebook indefinitely.

"Location data is tied to people's safety—if people know where you are, they know where you're not. Your location data is some of the most sensitive data we have. I expect we'll see from the get-go people who don't understand how to control the privacy settings," Privacy Rights Clearinghouse spokesperson Rainey Reitman told the Guardian. "What we see with Facebook is a massive learning curve. Every time they make a change, consumers scramble to figure out the privacy settings."

This is all in addition to the ACLU's declaration that Facebook is "rolling out 'here now,' privacy later," a common complaint about the social networking giant's attitude towards privacy. Facebook has a notoriously poor track record when it comes to introducing new functionality to the site, often making the privacy settings too lax, too complex, or all of the above. Even after things finally came to a head—causing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to apologize for the company's past mistakes and the company to roll out drastic changes to its privacy settings—privacy groups were still left unimpressed.

Facebook responds

Facebook has responded to the criticism, asserting that some groups are ignoring its efforts to simplify privacy settings and have a poor understanding of how Places works. "Many third parties have applauded our controls, indicating that people have more protections using Facebook Places than other widely used location services available today," Facebook spokesperson Andrew Noyes told Ars.

Specifically addressing the ACLU's assertion that friends can check you into places against your will, Noyes said, "Every person on Facebook must agree before they check in or can be checked in to a place. Before you have agreed and someone tries to tag you, you are not associated with any location. [...] ACLU NC ignores the many protections built into the system—only confirmed friends can try to check you in, to tag you a friend must also check themselves in, you are notified every time someone tries to check you in, and you can easily remove any tag."

It's clear that Places has started morphing into Facebook's latest pain in the butt with regards to privacy, but the issues seem much more nuanced this time around than in the past. The company is still pushing the buttons of some consumer advocates, though, so this is undoubtedly not the last we'll hear about the issue.