14 DAY TRIAL // With all the hype surrounding social networks, location services, real-time web and everything in between, it's easy to lose perspective and forget about all the real life implications our behavior online has. There's the occasional privacy scandal, both Facebook and Google went through it very recently, but things move on very fast. Now a new site put together by a few Dutch developers aims to highlight just how much we're, inadvertently, sharing online in an interesting manner.
PleaseRobMe is one-stop portal for tech-savvy, shady characters who want to find out what houses nearby are open season from their comfort of their laptops. Well, not exactly, the site is there just to prove a point, that most people do things online that they'd no better than to do in other circumstances. The site uses Foursquares data to determine when a user is not home. Foursquares is a location based game which allows users to 'check into' various locations. They can add their own custom locations apart from the existing ones and some have added their homes or their friend's homes complete with the full address.
"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," Boy Van Amstel, one of PleaseRobMe's developers, told the BBC. "The website is not a tool for burglary," he said. "The point we're getting at is that not long ago it was questionable to share your full name on the internet. We've gone past that point by 1000 miles."
Actual robbers turning to social media to find potential victims aren't exactly a mainstream phenomenon, though there have been isolated cases, but nothing this drastic has to happen for people to realize that common sense should apply online as much as everywhere else.