Friday, February 19, 2010

pleaserobme.com: The Dangers Of Locational Tagging In Public Twitter And Facebook Feeds

A website was created by some Dutch Internet Developers that showed when people were away from home based on Twitter and other feeds. The developers set up the site in only a few hours - they want it to warn people about the dangers of geopositioning public posts on social networks.
"The site took developers just a few hours to create after thousands began posting updates about where they were in the online social game Foursquare, which is based on a person's geo-location in the real world.

In Foursquare, a free application accessed through mobile phones, people send messages to friends and other players, including via Twitter, to say where they are. The more updates people give, the more places they visit, the more points they get. In some cases players "check in" at their own or a friend's home, giving the exact address.

There are several similar online applications, such as Gowalla, Brightkite and Google’s Latitude service.

The developers, Boy Van Amstel, Frank Groeneveld and Barry Borsboom, said that they did not want to encourage criminals, only to remind people that sharing information on the internet carried risks. "
- Times Online - PleaseRobMe website highlights dangers of telling world your location
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Time - Please Rob Me: The Dangers of Online Oversharing

UK Press Association - PleaseRobMe website makes a point

about.com - PleaseRobMe Demonstrates How Careless We've Become With the Web

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