Foursquare vs. Please Rob Me tagged: , ,

Foursquare vs. Please Rob Me

Posted by Kupr in Online Tools

If you’re like me, and have a smart phone, and are interested in services like Twitter, then you might be aware of a website called Foursqure. Foursquare uses a feature known as geo-location and enables you to ‘check-in’ at your location. The Foursquare application uses either your GPS or mobile network signal to establish your location. It then ‘recognises’ locations that are near you, such as coffee shops, restaurants, retail stores, or in fact anything that you would like to add to Foursquare as a location. When you ‘check-in’ at a location, your phone uploads this data to the Foursquare website where anyone on the site can see where you are. Slightly more useful if you are a Twitter user, is to link your Twitter account, so that Foursquare can automatically post a Twitter feed, and thus inform all of your Twitter followers of your location.

There are a number of good reasons to use Foursquare, such as meeting up with friends, collecting badges, and the ability to use reward and loyalty vouchers at participating businesses. Now some people might just not see the point in this, but according to a recent Tech Crunch article Foursquare are reporting over 1million ‘check-ins’ a week. That’s a big number.

This is important however, as the service also has a number of detractors, that point out that sharing you location may be a security risk. So that means, 1 million times a week, a large number of people are telling the world, where they are. The main issue, is that they are most likely not ‘checking-in’ at home, which presents would be burglars with an opportunity to ransack your house whilst your out somewhere else.

Last week three develops put their skills together and came up with the website pleaserobme.com to highlight this problem. It is quick to see that the site is a parody of Foursquare with the language referring to ‘Recent Empty Houses’ and ‘Latest Opportunities’.

pleaserobme.com

I think this is a worthy point to make people aware of, and I would not knock their efforts, however I think that this issue is a little crude.

For instance, a would be robber, would have to know the exact location of my house, and would have to get there quick enough before I came back. Whilst you are free to add your own locations, the one location I have not added is my own home. Even if someone else adds it, that would not specifically tie up to my account. pleaserobme.com also presumes that I must live alone, and if I’m out, then the house is empty. Maybe this is true in a number of cases, but I would imagine it’s not the case for the majority. There are also much easier ways of seeing if a house is empty. Under the cover of darkness drive to a nice looking street with some rich pickings, and sit outside in your get away car. Wait for all the occupants to leave a house, wait 5 mins, and then break in. You could also take a wild stab in the dark and presume that as most people work Monday to Friday, 9-6 there will be thousands of houses empty across the country in working hours.

As I said, I welcome the introduction of pleaserobme.com, as I think personal security, and how much data you share online is worthy of sitting down and thinking about. I did write a blog post about Location Based Services and Privacy Issues some time ago, however, in this case I think it might be overlooking some obvious facts.

(@kupr has just checked in at 999 Let’s Be Avenue You)

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