Interesting post, this has been going on since Day 1 of Foursquare unfortunately. And now that Foursquare has gained some traction in the social media circle of the “checkin apps” I agree it needs to address the issue of making sure the users GPS coordinates are correct. There are tons of threads at the Foursquare support forums debating just what to do with those foursquare users who check-in via Text Message. Its a tough one to call, do you just ignore a huge base of users and not let them play just because they don’t have a smart phone? or do you allow them to play knowing some will cheat and check-in at places they are not in b/c it does not send the GPS data.

I think in the end Foursquare might do away with allowing Text Message checkins once the usage of it drops down a bit.

Though this is a problem for all social media sites that use GPS coordinate data. I can fake my location with foursquare, twitter, Google’s Buzz or any app that uses GPS data from an app that controls my GPS output on my iPhone.

Good tip on the FoursquareX mac application, Im checking that out and it looks pretty neat. Looks like you could fake your location on that too pretty easily. Oh well, maybe its for the best we have these loopholes when it comes to getting GPS data attached to our social media outlets, you know… for privacy and all. (or at the very least an illusion of it)