The Social Networker

Getting busted by the boss (or significant other) with email location awareness
by Chris Miller at 04:06:55 PM on Monday, February 16th, 2009
The new location awareness feature for Gmail from Google Labs (blog posting on why it was created) is NOT a set it and forget it type thing.  Once enabled, it allows a tag line to appear in your email showing where in the world you might have been when composing and sending.  It uses the public IP address to identify you as best it can, however this has enormous limitations and false indicators.  That is why I use the words might have been.

For example, sitting at one of many Harrah's hotels across the country over the years, I noticed that many used the same pipe out the Internet, no matter where I was.  I used to utilize Plazes for location services and when it came on to guess my location, Las Vegas here I came!  Unfortunately I might have been at one in St Louis, for example.  While this is not always the case, it is definitely not an exception.

While you can turn this off and even manually remove it from the signature area, how many of us actually recheck the signature block each time before sending?  Once you create it, you forget it.  And this blends right in at the end.  So when you tell your boss you are working hard and it shows you at the lake, don't be surprised to the result.  Better yet, I wouldn't be shocked to see some spouses turn this on for unsuspected snooping.  First we had Facebook status divorces, now Google location ones?
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Location: St. Louis, MO		 Category:  Site Reviews 
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  • 1) Getting busted by the boss (or significant other) with email location awareness
    Created by Roy Rumaner at 02/16/2009 6:07:42 PM email |

    I tried it until it placed me 1000 miles away from where I really was. I am in Aurora, IL and it listed my location as somewhere in Georgia. I guess Google uses their GMail server location instead of the best guess it can come up with.


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