It seems that last week’s blog really revolved around Facebook Privacy issues. There was my post on the fake “dislike” button scam and there was the post on 5 Tips to Protect Yourself on Facebook.

Well, why not kick off this week with another story about a risk to your privacy on Facebook. The good news here is that this time you can take immediate action if you even see it as a problem.

Here’s the issue, last week Facebook introduced a new feature called “Places” that lets you and your friends “check in to locations“. You’re announcing your location to your live stream, as well as tagging your friends who are at the location with you. It’s something similar to what Foursquare does.

For some, there’s nothing wrong with this, it’s not a big deal. For others it’s a complete invasion of their privacy, and it’s a very big deal.

For me, something about this rubs me the wrong way. I don’t like that I wasn’t able to choose if I wanted this to be on, that it was forced on me . It’s kind of like Facebook is Donald Sutherland at the end of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and pointing me out, telling everyone where I am. I just don’t like it.

Network World’s Jon Brodkin makes sense of the mess of trying to turn off Facebook Places in his article titled “How to turn Facebook Places off“.

“Now that Facebook Places has been turned on, users who are uncomfortable with sharing their locations with Facebook friends should consider going through their privacy settings and making sure they aren’t sharing more information than they are comfortable with.”

Well worth the read, and John’s instructions make something that is actually difficult pretty easy.