Common sense tells you not to advertise the fact that you're not at home. Surprisingly, everyday thousands of people advertise this very fact on Twitter. A new website appropriately named PleaseRobMe.com shows tweets that specifically contain keywords such as "not at home" and "on vacation".
How dangerous is this? Just for fun, I closely examined one of the tweets. It was from a young entrepreneur in Salem, OR advertising the fact that he had just settled down at the local Starbucks. A couple of Google searches quickly revealed his iPhone number, websites, and various social media accounts. His website also uses foursquare.com, which gave me a map of his exact location.
One website, intelius.com, offered to sell me his full name, address, age, date of birth, home phone number, relative’s names, address history, average income, and home value for just $0.95...all of the information a burglar would just love to have. For criminals, it doesn’t get any easier than this!
James Bell
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