The buzz on Google Latitude it hot, and much of it is attitude about sharing locations.  Where have all these people been?  Location sharing is not a new topic or event.  Brightkite and others have been doing it well, as that is all they do.  And building services around it.  What seems to be the focus of everyone's posting is the sharing of your location.  One thing that Latitude does not do yet, is store your previous locations.  Meaning they have not built a service around your trends yet.  So let's get into privacy and stalking shall we?

Privacy - I am hearing huge amounts of concerns about sharing your location.  Forget location services for a second,  many of us say where the heck we are all day via Twitter, blogs and other tools.  Your privacy is as open, closed, exact or wide as you decide.  Do you honestly think I do not know what city you are in?  Do you honestly think I could not find more of your profile information and piece it together?  You control your own settings, when Latitude updates and to what extent you share.   Latitude offers you the ability to share, set or hide your location.  

Inside of Google maps there is 2 features,  "My Location" and Latitude.  The cool part that many are missing is that they can be enabled or disabled independently of each other.  My Location uses Google maps to provide approximate location services.  Latitude takes it to the next step by sharing this information with friends that you have specified, or the public.  My Location also does not associate anything about where you are with an account name or phone number.

The whole idea is being aware of what information you are sharing and to whom so you do not lead to stalking or accidental run-ins you never wanted.  The accuracy of where you are depends on how you enter or obtain the location

• Hand enter an address - well you give them the exact location and it is shared to those you let see exact addresses.  Not help below on giving city only access to some
• Hand enter a city - well everyone gets a city location
• Wifi - it will use the nearest access point you can connect to and it knows the source.  One of the fun ones about this is that you could go to a Harrah's hotel in one city and it uses their network out from Vegas.  So you go from being in one city to the next in seconds.
• My Location - it will use the good old cell phone tower triangulation technique.  The more towers it can see, the better the accuracy.
• GPS - well how good is your line of sight to the satellite?  There you go

Stalking - This is an entirely different beast.  While you could hide your exact location for a specific friend, if they are stalking you they shouldn't be a friend in the first place.  But let us assume that you do not know you have a freaky person watching your every move and hoping to be in the same place as you "accidentally".  You have now entered SocialStalking land. and privacy rules on location services from Google Latitude.  You can move anyone at any time to city level awareness only.  Go into your friends list - more info - options -and change them to city level.  This gives you the best of both worlds.

If you are sharing exact location across the public stream or  they  are a friend, they can get directions to your location as well as cal a phone number listed that you have shared out.

Summary - Share where you are, be more transparent.  But be damned aware of who you share it with and at what level.  Do not be afraid to limit a view to city only or not accept a request.  But for us early adopters that use 14 different location services already, stop the attitude.