Incarnate suggested I post the following:

For a while, people have been concerned about the fact that, using the buddy system, buddies can locate your position and therefore the buddy system is controversial. So, the suggestion is simple: make the ability of buddies to see your location optional.

That's it.

If you don't want them to know where you are, don't buddy them. Pretty damn simple.

What ladron said. Buddies are for chumps.

Personally, I see no reason for the Buddy system to show locations. Particularly since the guild system only displays member locations during chat.

I also see no reason to change the current setup. If you get screwed by a buddy then you might want to re-evaluate your skills set for evaluating people, especially in rl.

That said, I don't really care. Since concern is an imagined problem rather than a real one, I think the dev's have more important things to do that modify a trivial bit of data displayed. More to the point, if people haven't found a way to abuse it after years of being available, anyone who gets harmed by it deserved it for being silly.

/Buddy invite everyone

Love, Peace and Harmony,

Hortan, the other member of IPA

I once had over 300 separate players on my buddy list.

It got annoying.