I Twitter, Therefore, Please Rob Me
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Data Protection, Twitter, Blog, Security, Internet on
You don’t have to be a Twitter Psychic to know when people are away from home, you can use the Please Rob Me website instead.
A group by the name of Forthehack has launched a website called Please Rob Me which serves to expose the security risk of location-aware online services such as Twitter and Foursquare. It has opted to do so by listing all the empty homes that are available to be robbed by publishing a live feed of those Foursquare players who automatically post location updates to Twitter.
As I write this there are some 180 ‘new opportunities’ to rob someone, with Twitter usernames displaying exactly when these people left home.
So why am I publicising this? Because it’s a really good idea in that it exposes the folly of sharing your location data, at all times, via services such as Twitter, Google Buzz and of course Foursquare to the world at large without a second thought to the security implications of doing so.
Some might argue that it is irresponsible to publish this data, but hang on a minute the whole point is that all this data is already in the public domain. The irresponsible action is being taken by those choosing to put it their, not by those opting to remind them how stupid they are being.
Seriously, would you put an advert in the local paper saying ‘I’m leaving my house tomorrow at 10am and won’t be back for 3 hours’ or such like? I’m guessing the answer is no, yet plenty of people are quite happy to do the equivalent online in the name of being social, or playing a game. It really does beggar belief.
Seriously again, things are even more problematical with geo-location aware services these days as they can actually post maps showing exactly where you are based on the GPS data of the mobile device being used to make your postings. So not only do people let the world know they are leaving the house empty, but they show them exactly how far away from it they are as well.
Here’s what the people behind the Please Rob me site have to say in defence of their actions:
“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.”
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
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