It's not a joke. Do you use one of the numerous services that let you tweet or otherwise post your location for the world to see? pleaserobme.com searches twitter and posts the tweets that give away the tweeters location.
It's not as nefarious as it sounds (or as it could be). The site was developed by three guys to demonstrate that we have some very bad habits, security-wise. The actual address data appears to be substituted with data from lands far away from the original poster. But that doesn't change the fact that large numbers of people are making their locations known. And part of knowing where you are is knowing where you're not. Which is exactly the information a burglar wants. Not to mention stalkers, psycho exes and assorted crazies.
Do you tweet your location? How often have you said something like, "Going to the game, hope we win. Go Tech!" How many hours would that give a crook to burglarize your home?
I check in with foursquare everyday when I go to work (I am the mayor of the Avalanche-Journal, fetch me a bagel)
ReplyDeleteThe thing of it is, I do not check-in at my home, well I do; but since it is an apartment complex with an address instead of coordinates, a potential thief would have a hard time tracking it down, and there are ways to hide your home from the service, by giving it a name and marking it private.
You are just as likely to be robbed living in a house because if you are like most people, you work a 9-5 job which means you are not home.
Instead of checking foursquare to see potential marks, it is just as easy to case a place and see what their behavior is.
So the site pleaserobme.com is a pointless effort to get people to think about something that they have to control over; is it smart to check in at your home...no, does it really give the bad guy an advantage, no.
You're right that it really doesn't matter, as far as burglars are concerned. But it does represent a mindset that would be wise to cultivate. That mindset is to think about the possible consequences of what you are doing before doing it. Some people provide way to much information about where they go and what they do. A couple of years ago a reporter actually followed a young woman using Twitter or Facebook, I don't recall which. He even found out enough to see a webcam in what he assumed was her apartment. He quit following her at that point, and she was none the wiser. But what if he had been a stalker or a rapist instead of a reporter? She was giving her life to strangers. I assume she thought she was safe while reporting her every move to the world.
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