Please Share

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Please Rob Me, Really?

Boy Van Amstel and a group of Dutch developers created pleaserobme.com to prove a point about the dangers of sharing your precise location information on the internet, according to this BBC article."It started with me and a friend looking at our Twitter feeds and seeing more and more Foursquare posts," said Van Amstel, one of PleaseRobMe's developers."People were checking in at their house, or their girlfriend's or friend's house, and sharing the address - I don't think they were aware of how much they were sharing."

While the site does heighten awareness to the potential dangers of broadcasting your current location online, I think the logic is slightly flawed as it assumes a number of things:

1. That you live alone;
2. That you haven't taken any precautions against theft; and
3. That the bad guys are sifting through millions of tweets to single you out.

Not to say that there aren't potential risks and that you shouldn't take precautions! I just don't buy into the notion that this makes you any more vulnerable than the next guy, if you use you head a little.

Thanks for the post idea Dawn!

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