Aka-Aki

Sounds like a cult, probably isn't. It actually is a relatively recent social network that is slowly growing in the germanophone regions. It's probably not the next Facebook but an interesting one, nonetheless.

The primary idea is that you run an app on your phone that uses your Bluetooth transceiver and your data connection all the time (thus you need a volume based data plan). Once the app runs, you are online and the actual data transferred isn't too much of a problem when you turn images off.

Of course you can also use Aka-Aki from your browser and for some things it's even preferable, but the novel things happen with the phone app. For one, it's simply amusing to linger at a busy intersection and see all the TomToms appear and vanish and for every 20 "unknown" Bluetooth devices there often is at least one device with a name that makes you chuckle and wonder whom it could belong to.

Now, apart from all that, why does it do it? Simple, the Bluetooth MAC address is used as a unique identifier that gets associated with a profile. When you come near a person with an address linked to a profile you see it in your discovery list and can view the details. If two people have a sticker in common (stickers are like groups with a picture, expect a separate post) the phone will make a ruckus and alert you to the kinship in proximity.

I can't say whether that is desirable or not since I currently occupy a region with a limited number of Aka-Aki users but I was quite surprised when I looked at my phone one day when playing around with it and noticing that an "unknown" had come in contact last time with a different user months ago and was still associated with this user.

This begs the question whether somebody actually gives implicit agreement of having his or her unique identifier recorded and cross-referenced without ever giving consent to the service or even knowing about the service. From simply recording the unique ID without further information it seems difficult to invoke data privacy protection laws but their new version might change this.

Version 0.8.9
With this version Aka-Aki introduced a new feature last week that makes it now possible to see everybody who is in the same general area with a compatible phone. This is probably the same trick Google Maps uses to pinpoint your position to within a mile, namely the cell information from the GSM/UMTS connection.

When one now looks at the case of tracking identifiers of third parties, privacy protection might well be a problem since reasonably close estimates of position become possible through cross-reference and an opt-in measure seems more and more necessary.

Still, apart from all the complications, dangers and threats, it's still fun to play around with. Just make sure you're nowhere near the Palins, the mascot is a moose!