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Health & Fitness

Twitter is Tracking Bruner's Every Move

The question is: Does he know it's happening?

Birmingham City Manager Bob Bruner — I can't wait to meet this guy! — is apparently an avid social networker. His first tweet, on Feb. 28, 2009, said, "Joining each and every social network on the planet for once and for all!"

Whether or not he joined EVERY network I'm not going to take the time to confirm, but I managed to begin following him on Twitter a few months ago while checking out the site.

I never became a loyal Twitter user, and so I never actually read any of Bruner's tweets until a few days ago, when I got a new Android phone. It came with a built-in gadget for Twitter feeds, so I input my username and password, and voila, out came the tweets to which I had earlier subscribed.

Bruner's short messages are pretty mundane. What caught my eye, though, were the regular tweets, issued from a site called Foursquare, that track his every move.

I'm at Ypsilanti Freighthouse (400-698 Market Pl, Ypsilanti)
I'm at Dave & Betty's (227-249 N River St, Ypsilanti)
I'm at Sidetrack Bar and Grill (56 E Cross St, at N River St, Ypsilanti)
I'm at Rust Belt Market (22801 Woodward Ave., W. 9 Mile Rd., Ferndale)
I'm at Solstice Massage Therapy (22720 Woodward Ave, Ferndale)
I'm at Birmingham Municipal Building (151 Martin, Birmingham)
I'm at Dynamic Life Chiropractic (725 South Adams Road, btw Maple & Lincoln, Birmingham)
I'm at Salon Rehe

That's just one day (in reverse chronological order), May 7.

The way it works is, you load a Foursquare app on your phone, and it uses GPS to determine your location, matches it up with a name and address, and then sends it across the entire planet — all automatically.

OK. This is creepy.

My guess: Bruner has no idea this is happening. My guess: Thousands, if not millions, of others are in the same boat.

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