‘Please Rob Me’ points out the dark side of location based social networking
With the explosion in Social Networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla, we’ve all have those “friends” who feel the need to continually update the world with their every daily move.
“Robyn is meeting friends for coffee”
“Scott just landed in Washington, D.C.”
While those posts seem innocent at best and annoying at their worst, they are also an invitation for would be burglars to determine exactly who might not be at home.
A new website called “Please Rob Me” takes a tongue and check approach to that information and let’s users see that very information anywhere in the world.
The creators state clearly on the website:
Don’t get us wrong, we love the whole location-aware thing. The information is very interesting and can be used to create some pretty awesome applications. However, the way in which people are stimulated to participate in sharing this information, is less awesome. Services like Foresquare allow you to fulfill some primeval urge to colonize the planet. A part of that is letting everyone know you own that specific spot. You get to tell where you are and if you’re there first, it’s yours. O, and of course there’s badges..
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.
The goal of this website is to raise some awareness on this issue and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz etc.
So next time you decide to tell everyone of your Facebook friends that “I’m Pub Crawling tonight in Cherry Creek from 6-10pm, maybe you’ll give that a second thought.
