Posted
on Tuesday Mar 2nd at 6:00pm
Do you use social media to let the world know what you are doing, with whom, and where? Some people could care less about these up-to-the minute reports on your life. But others—of the criminal kind—put this information to use.When you post your remote location on Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare, or similar sites, you’re telling the world that you are not at home. And that’s just the information a criminal needs to think now might be the opportune time to break into your home and steal your stuff.
Want to see just how pervasive a habit it is to post your every move? PleaseRobMe.com aggregates user posts from Twitter and FourSquare which tell of users’ whereabouts. PleaseRobMe.com was not intended to be a go-to place for burglars to see who’s not home, rather, it was created to illustrate how accessible this information is and how willing people are to post it.
To put it in another perspective, PleaserRobMe.com uses this comparison: “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.”
