Please rob me! (Empty homes advertised)

[Ben Lahnger]

I found this online and thought it was worth passing along:

Originally Posted by pleaserobme.com

PLEASE ROB ME!
Listing all those empty homes out there

Hey, do you have a Twitter account? Have you ever noticed those messages in which people tell you where they are? Pretty annoying, eh. Well, they're actually also potentially pretty dangerous. We're about to tell you why.

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 Foursquare 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. Because all this site is, is a dressed up Twitter search page. Everybody can get this information.

If you go to the pleaserobme.com website, you can see a listing of all the people who have just announced on twitter that they're not home. Or, more disconcertingly, people whose absence from their home has been announced by a friend. I posted this here so you have a fighting change of never showing up in this list or at least controlling it so your home address is not publicly broadcast.

[Solumina]

God damn it, some people are morons

[Anarasha]

I thought this was common knowledge o.o

[Saya]

So when Kevin Smith was twittering away how he wasn't allowed to fly because of his weight, I could have been robbing his house instead of reading those tweets?

[Anarasha]

It's true, if you somehow publish to the public that you are going away, they can usually find you through your name and personal information. A lot of homerobbers study Facebook and Twitter just for that.

[Anarasha]

I generally do write to my friends on Facebook etc. where I am if it's something special - once I return back home. That's the order to do it in.
Writing it before is kinda like wiping your ass, crapping and then pulling up your pants, it's not the best way to do it

Edit: Sorry for the double post, I am really tired and didn't notice until after I had posted, and in this state of lack of sleep, I decided that I might as well leave it up.

[Ben Lahnger]

Originally Posted by Saya

So when Kevin Smith was twittering away how he wasn't allowed to fly because of his weight, I could have been robbing his house instead of reading those tweets?

Other than the fact that he probably lives in one of those expensive places with the nice security systems, sure. That might have been a more interesting way to spend your time. 0-o

[PortraitOfSanity]

That's pretty awesome, actually. And it's not like the website owners are doing anything legally wrong, either. They're just re posting publicly available information.