If you watch the news, you’ve probably heard that Facebook will destroy your marriage and career and texting will corrupt your child. The dangers of social networks may be a bit overreported, and we’ll leave you to decide whether this next item is a valid security warning or pure paranoia.
The website Please Rob Me tracks location-based Twitter posts and puts them into a livefeed. You can narrow it down by location. The site’s “Why?” section explains:
The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you’re definitely not… home. So here we are; on one end we’re leaving lights on when we’re going on a holiday, and on the other we’re telling everybody on the internet we’re not home. It gets even worse if you have “friends” who want to colonize your house. That means they have to enter your address, to tell everyone where they are. Your address.. on the internet.. Now you know what to do when people reach for their phone as soon as they enter your home. That’s right, slap them across the face.
The goal of this website is to raise some awareness on this issue and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz etc.
Something like automatically tweeting from FourSquare (which is very annoying) can tell people you aren’t home. And if you’re not in the phone book (whatever that is), your address can still be public, if you’ve shared it online.
So the Please Rob Me folks say you’re leaving yourself open to crime if you share your location and your home address.
What do you think? Certainly burglary and stalking have been around longer than location-aware applications, but are careless internet socialites making others’ illicit activities easier? Or are people just being too worried?
Maybe it’s a combination of both. What are your thoughts?
7 comments
February 20, 2010 at 10:43 am
Lou
Paranoia.
It’s assuming that your house is empty when you’re not home (ie you don’t live with a spouse, partner, children, parents). And I’m pretty sure that with or without facebook/foursquare/etc, just about everyone’s address is up for grabs online if you know your way around various search engines and local data bases.
And how is this different than sharing my employment information online? If a potential burgler wanted to hit my lavish chateau, all he or she would need to know is that I am gainfully employed and have regular work hours.
February 20, 2010 at 10:53 am
gabebullard
Maybe I should abstain from live broadcasting. Someone might hear me and break into my home. (I’m kidding, of course)
February 21, 2010 at 8:20 am
Michelle
Waxy.org has a really good take on this “new” threat:
http://waxy.org/2010/02/regarding_foursquare_and_please_rob_me/
February 21, 2010 at 11:09 am
Gary Guss
Have you eaten your Fearios this morning ?
February 22, 2010 at 9:40 am
Kentuckyville
If we fear everything, we do end up doing nothing.
February 22, 2010 at 11:51 am
Brad
By using blippy.com you can also let would-be thieves know exactly what they should be stealing from you while you’re away.
February 24, 2010 at 1:07 pm
Jeff
I’ve always been leery about advertising my vacation plans in casual conversations and I use the same caution with FB and twitter. However, I’m not as concerned about the casual plans to go to a concert or ball game, etc.
Having said that, I think social networks do provide a new layer of vulnerability in both privacy and security and it will likely be exploited by the unscrupulous. These types of concerns are not new or isolated to social networking technologies. The so called “digital age” has always had its draw backs and pit-falls and it’s up to the individual to exercise common sense when dealing with them but that too is not new. Careless people will be careless regardless of the vulnerability.