Facebook has released a new feature called “Nearby Friends” that lets friends find contacts who, as the name suggests, happen to be nearby.

The feature uses the GPS functionality on both iPhone and Android (News - Alert) phones to share a user’s precise location with others.

As with a lot of the social networking site’s features, this one has attracted some criticism for alleged privacy violations. The site has become notorious for “Facebook (News - Alert) stalking,” or obsessively tracking a user’s updates on the site.

Sharing a user’s location could make it easier for someone with bad intentions to find a user, but the Nearby Friends feature is strictly optional. In fact, users can control almost all of their personal information in their settings, setting it to be visible to friends only or blocking their information.

Concerned parents will be happy to know that the feature will also only be available to users over the age of 18, and the location will be visible to friends only, not the general public. The Nearby Friends feature is also strictly opt-in, and only those who have enabled it will be able to track each other.

Despite the privacy concerns, the feature does have some obvious benefits.

“Listen, we know that all our smartphones, as soon as they're connected to the Internet, our cell phone companies and potentially the government can find us," radio personality Michael Garfield, the “High Tech Texan,” told KTRH in Houston.  "It also could be used for better purposes, say finding a missing child or an elderly person who don't know where they are, so it could actually do some good rather than bad."

Garfield also said that the feature had limitations as to how precisely it could track users who had enabled it. "What it's going to do is it's going to pinpoint within about a half mile, it's not going to be the exact location.”