Below, find a video series that follow half of an hour long panel hosted by Bancroft on geo-location services this week in San Francisco as part of Social Media Week.

Privacy was addressed for a larger portion of the discussion than I think any of us anticipated, particularly given the fact that it was an all male panel.

One of the ways you can get around privacy issues is by lying, mentions a few of the panelists, because there simply are not easier fool-proof ways to do that today. For example, with Foursquare, which I continue to receive invitations from daily (mostly strangers I have never met), if you accept a friend request, you are automatically giving them your phone number as part of that ‘accept.’

Jeremy Toeman plays the bad cop – “does anyone in the audience question the ability for geo-location services to protect your private data? Not their intent he emphasizes, but their ability to protect your data?”

Says Robert Scoble, it’s less likely for privacy information to leak from the company and more likely to leak by accident from users…..”oh yeah, here’s Kevin’s number.” This kind of thing happens all the time and Scoble uses the credit card fraud example: is it more likely that a privacy leak will happen by accident from the restaurant owner or from the waiter taking the transaction?

Women can protect themselves by checking in as they leave a venue or choosing not to check in at all if it’s not a crowded place where they’re surrounded by lots of friends, particularly strong male friends.

Aside from addressing privacy issues, contextual value-add was discussed. In other words, geo-loco layers on top of apps are valuable if they can automatically detect where you shot a photo and what you shot it of, or if you’re in a region where local advertisers can proactively offer you a coupon or points to a venue you frequent several times a week.

Not everyone agreed, but the bottom line is: geo-location services, particularly on mobile devices are not going away anytime soon. The popularity of new services and people using them are only increasing. It will be up to consumers to control what they release and to whom and whether they open up their audience to knowing what they do and when, or choosing to only share it with close friends and family, i.e., the real value, at least initially.

The video coverage below gives you a snapshot of what industry followers and fans think of where geo-loco is going and the impact it is having now and in the future. Panelist line-up here.