Following Yahoo Inc.’s launch of Fire Eagle, a service intended to help users divulge information upon their real-world location to their friends online, privacy advocates warn about the dangers of lurching into the employment of such location based services.

The Centre for Digital Democracy informed the BBC that “while these services will be a powerful force in our lives they are a potential privacy nightmare.”

Yahoo made the service available to the public this week, although Fire Eagle had been formerly released in the form of a private beta test. According to the company, users will initially need to sign up with a Yahoo ID before benefiting from the service’s applications. After signing up, they will be able to update their physical locations via Fire Eagle’s Web site or using a cell phone with Fire Eagle’s mobile site. So far, over 50 developers have registered to provide their users with the fresh location-based service. First applicants include Dopplr, a Web site for sharing travel plans, as well as Pownce, a Web site for sharing messages and files, The Associated Press reported.

“These services are all being sold to consumers as only providing real benefit. No one is talking about the fact they are about building and collecting more data, not just about the content you like but where you go and where you are at the moment,” said Jeff Chester, director of the Centre for Digital Democracy, as quoted by the BBC.

On the other hand, Tom Coates, who led the development of the service as head of product for Yahoo’s start-up project, Brickhouse, said the platform was conceived as a manner to facilitate the Web sites’ geographical awareness and personalization. Furthermore, he said the platform was similar to a “switchboard that anyone can build on top of and we are the bit that helps connect to other services out there.”

In addition to this, Yahoo explained that the service offered users absolute control over their private information and over which applications had access to these details. Users will also be able to keep under control which application can follow their exact location, ZIP or postcode or the city where they are located.