Is over-sharing putting us in danger?

February 18 2010, 9:32am

With all the hype of location based sharing this year there were bound to be a few who question the safety and even necessity of the new trend toward super-transparency. A new website called PleaseRobMe.com may only aggregate publicly shared check-ins, but its name may have a greater impact on participants. The sites founders, Barry Borsboom, Boy van Amstel and Frank Groeneveld say that its “intention is not, and never has been, to have people burglarized. However it does intend to bring awareness to the potential dangers in which people are stimulated to participate in sharing this information. Services such as Foursquare, Brightkite and Google Buzz are certainly fun, especially when you get to become the mayor of a certain location or you earn more points than your friends, however they are also public. This means that everyone can get this information and see not only where you are but where you are definitely not. Certain evidence points to the fact that some are turning to social media to support criminal activity and find their targets. Video podcaster Israel Hyman left town last May and sent out a tweet via his Twitter account @izzyvideo. When he returned home he found his house burglarized and while the police have yet to directly link the break in to the tweet, Hyman was quick to link the two. While I have a hard time believing everyone will suddenly give up on this popular trend - as we all seem to live in a “it can’t happen to me” dreamland, I do think we should all begin to consider safe location sharing.