Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Please Rob Me


Highlighting the problems with people broadcasting their location to all and sundry on Foursquare and similar, and then automatically linking it to twitter. It's essentially a feed from twitter listing all Foursquare checkins.


(I am writing this from my desk at home, with my pack of Staffies growling in the background)

Update - the serious side of this issue is well illustrating in this article, claiming that social media users may soon see a hike in their insurance premiums...

"
Darren Black, head, home insurance, Confused.com, says the growth of location-based social networking is likely to have an impact on premiums, with hikes of up to 10% for users.
"Criminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their information gathering even using Google earth and street view to plan their burglaries with military precision. Insurance providers are starting to take this into account when they are assessing claims and we may in future see insurers declining claims if they believe the customer was negligent," says Black"

2 comments:

charlie gower said...

hmmm

their goal: to raise awareness!
but also to give the not so technically crim a one stop shop of where to rob...

they did call it location-aware service though, instead of location based, so at least that pleased me...

interesting problems though, that we don't understand yet...

Dan said...

Yeah - they were just making a point, and in a very amusing way, so well done the them.

People need to be more careful about what they reveal about themselves.

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