Be cautious: crime on facebook

Anyone with commonsense knows better than to walk down a dark alley at night. Regardless of whether or not there may be someone will ill-intent lurking, there is still the potential for a crime to happen. It is this potential which keeps people at bay. What people fail to realize is that this same concept applies to the online community as well.

One website has decided to illuminate the seriousness of this relatively new issue. On Feb. 17, www.pleaserobme.com was launched. This website is dedicated “to listing all those empty homes out there.”

PleaseRobMe works by sifting through a variety of social networking sites, like Twitter, and searching for posts which indicate the user is currently not at home. A result would look something like this:

“Bob T. left home and checked in 2 minutes ago:

Headed into a committee meeting to discuss driving traffic to local businesses. What do you suggest? (@ SODO Complex)”

After knowing that an individual is not at their home, locating their address is a relatively simple process. This is especially true as a majority of social networking sites contain a section of the user’s profile listing their home and/or business address.

Everyday users post personal information to their social networking websites without any hesitancy, even though this information is published to literally hundreds, if not thousands, of people who they would probably prefer not know this information.

Forthehack is the organization who created this website. Their idea behind PleaseRobMe was not as the title implies. Instead, Forthehack wants to illustrate how easily we trust people with private information.

“Highlighting the privacy pitfalls associated with location-enabled technology is an important step in helping Internet users take control of their privacy. Pleaserobme.com is drawing attention to the risks associated with over-sharing of personal information, an issue which opens the door for a broader policy discussion on privacy issues in the era of the location-enabled web,” New Media Manager at the Center for Democracy and Technology, Adam Rosenberg said.

Forthehack is now searching for companies or organizations who might be interested in obtaining the aforementioned site in order to further public awareness on these issues.
Forthehack hopes that the next time a user wants to post a location revealing status they will be able to recognize the potential for a crime and reconsider.