Please Rob Me Dot Com… Brilliant!
PleaseRobMe.com posts when you’re not at home
Sometimes you just have to laugh. And today I am laughing in a smug way, I admit.
Because I saw on the front page of my local paper a tech news story (tech? on the front page?) and a Google search showed that all the ‘tech sites’ had similar stories. It seems someone has created a website called pleaserobme.com (currently offline.. too many hits today, probably).
This website is a mashup of users’ content from Twitter, the extremely popular ‘microblogging’ service, and FourSquare, a site in which users share their location via “geolocation”. PleaseRobMe reformats the information that users make public on FourSquare to read like an alert to a would-be burglar, stating that a user “left home and checked in 12 minutes ago,” followed by the user’s update: “I’m at San Francisco International Airport.”
(FourSquare is not the only ‘location-sharing’ application people are using.)
I am laughing because I have been saying right from the starting gate that “social networks” are fraught with peril for overly chatty users who broadcast too much information. With geolocation enabled, you’re basically saying when nobody’s home, or helping a stalker track you — great idea! (sarcasm)
Further proof to me that Twitter is for twits.. but, hey, “it’s kewel!”
(Great, Paul. You just angered 10 million+ people.. Smart!)
To read the full story, click here. Also, a good read on this here.
Related: How to Avoid Facebook and Twitter Disasters. Take Some Practical Steps To Control What Others See About You.
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• About Tech Paul
I am a Retired computer & network technician. I used to think the machines were pretty cool. Now I don’t.
They’re anything but.
I regularly posted how-to’s and tricks & tips and general computing advice here starting in 2007. (Use the Search tool to find answers. But be aware, many are rather dated.) Sometimes I answered (your) specific questions in an article if I believed the answer was generally helpful to “everyone”. All the writing you see was my own, typos and all. There always is/was an implied “IMHO” in what you see here.
Note: You are responsible for using this blog and its content. I am in no way liable for any losses caused by user error, viruses and/or other malware, hardware or software failure, or any other conceivable reason.
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