Sometimes we share way too much information about ourselves online and security experts are urging people to think twice before posting their Christmas vacation plans on social media websites.
A website called PleaseRobMe.com shows public postings from those who told the world via Twitter and Foursquare that they were away from home. When available, the website also showed GPS data to pinpoint exactly where the homes were located.
Pleaserobme.com started up earlier this year and after a pretty short time they felt they had made their point and stopped putting up the links.
It did remind people that maybe they are offering up too much information online. Consider that people who rob for a living look at things very differently than you and I. And this kind of information can be useful to robbers.
You might say: "We're posting for our friends … what's the risk?"
The thing to remember is that anything you post online could be seen by anyone.
Say your friend posts your information to another friend, and one of their friends is not so honest. You always have to consider the intended audience and unintended audience for everything you post online.
Consider things like -- do you need to activate your cellphone GPS so that people see exactly where you're located when you send a tweet or post on Facebook?
This entire subject is still pretty new territory and we all need to think about what we offer up to the world.
The new phrase is "locational privacy." Should you have the right to keep your location secret and why should you not want people to know where you are?
There are more and more services being offered that use your location as a key point of reference and you must remember that many of those systems keep track of your location.
