Remember Please Rob Me,
the site that tried to raise awareness about the dangers of broadcasting publicly on Foursquare and other geo services when you are not home? I don’t know that any burglaries ever actually occurred as a result of the information on the site, which in any case is not operational any more (it made it’s point).
But when you take the same idea of location broadcasting and put it on a service with more than 500 million users, it is no longer just academic. People’s houses will get robbed, at least in New Hamshire. A burglary ring
in Nashua, New Hampshire targeted people who checked into places on Facebook, alerting them when they were not home. The police caught them after they broke into 50 homes and stole $100,000 worth of goods.
This seems like a good time to revisit Please Rob Me’s mission statement
:
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.
Please Rob Me, indeed.
Website: facebook.com Location: Palo Alto, California, United States Founded: February 1, 2004 Funding: $836M Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users.
Facebook was founded by… Learn More
Website: foursquare.com Location: New York, New York, United States Founded: March 11, 2009 Funding: $21.4M Foursquare is a location based social network that incorporates gaming elements.
Users share their location with friends by “checking in” via a smartphone app or by text message. Points are awarded for checking in at various venues. Users can… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBasehttp://www.necn.com/09/10/10/Burglary-ring-targets-Facebook-users-in-/landing...
Location based social media takes a hit. Ouch.
Mike