With ‘Facebook Places’ having recently joined the other location-based services like Foursquare, the users of the social networking site will be able to let their friends know about their movements – including their visits to a restaurant, a gym or other similar places.

The Facebook Places location service, like most other such services, will transmit the whereabouts of the users only with their consent. The users willing to go in for the location service need to have a smartphone with GPS or other geolocating capabilities; on which the free application has to be installed.

To activate the feature, users will have to “check in” to a place by selecting it from a list of nearby venues that appear on their screen – only then Facebook will be able to broadcast their location to their friends. 

However, since the Facebook default settings, which can be changed, allow the location information of a user to be transmitted to everyone that has been listed as a “friend,” the more information the users broadcast about themselves online, the more are the chances of it becoming known to marketers, strangers, future or current employers and other users.

As such, to disallow outside applications from accessing the check-ins, the Facebook users should click “Edit your settings” under “Applications and Websites”; and click on the “Edit Settings" box next to “Info accessible through your friends” and uncheck “Places I check in to” – thus changing the privacy settings.