Please Rob Me
February 25th, 2010Via: New Zealand Herald:
As more people reveal their whereabouts on social networks, a new site has sprung up to remind you that letting everyone know where you are – and, by extension, where you’re not – could leave you vulnerable to those with less-than-friendly intentions. The site’s name says it all: Please Rob Me.
Launched last week, Please Rob Me is exceptionally straightforward. Pretty much all it does is show posts that appear on Twitter from a location-sharing service, Foursquare.
Please Rob Me puts these posts into a long, chronological list it refers to as “Recent Empty Homes.”
Please Rob Me assembles its list by taking information that Twitter makes freely available so that many websites can show tweets. But the point of Please Rob Me could be made with data that flows on dozens of other sites as well.
People are comfortable sharing all kinds of personal details on social sites such as Facebook.
And now people are flocking to location-based web services, such as Foursquare, Gowalla or Loopt, that let them use their cell phones to alert friends to where they are.
Some people choose to show their whereabouts only to approved buddies. But plenty push these very specific updates through public Twitter profiles that anyone can see.
This phenomenon is what motivated the creators of Please Rob Me, according to one of them, Boy Van Amstel, 25.
Van Amstel said in a phone interview from Holland, where the site is based, that technology has become so easy to use that people are sharing too much online without even realising it. He and his co-founders want people to think twice about it.
a musician friend of mine was recently telling me about how DJs and musicians in London in the 90s were constantly getting their houses broken into while at gig. some lost a lot of expensive gear, others entire record collections. since then, i am told, many have gone to great lengths to keep their addresses out of the public domain and store valuables at other locations.
this twit-ter stuff is so stoopid the mind boggles. making your location publicly available in realtime? ffs, that’s dumber than dumb.
Seems like it would have easier (and a lot more fun) to buy your mates a couple of flasks of gin and let them sit in the dark with cricket bats, waiting on the intruders…
I suppose that could still be done. Just twitter about the coke score/diamond heist/technology theft you just pulled off and how it sucks you have to leave the stuff behind while you visit a sick grandma for the weekend.
Play it right, and you might even be able to bag an overzealous and illegally operating LEO.