PleaseRobMe and the Dangers of Location-Based Social Networks
Location-based social networks like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and Google Buzz are currently among the fastest growing new mobile services. All of these apps have one thing in common: they encourage you to share your current location with the rest of the world. By doing this, though, you are also telling people where you are not: at home. A new site, PleaseRobMe, plays on this theme and displays real-time updates from Foursquare users who broadcast their check-ins on Twitter.
According to the trio of developers behind the site (Barry Borsboom, Frank Groeneveld and Boy van Amstel), "the goal of this website is to raise some awareness of this issue and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz etc." There are also ads on the site, so the developers clearly also had something else in mind when they started this site. No matter the developers' motivations, the visceral reaction to PleaseRobeMe on Twitter, shows that the developers have hit a nerve.
PleaseRobMe doesn't show anything new that a regular Twitter search for the 4sq.com domain wouldn't uncover, but it's the first time that a service has made this information so blatantly obvious. We don't think that a lot of thieves are actually trolling the Internet for information when people leave their homes, though we have already seen some burglaries where status updates may have played a role.
Besides robberies, there are also other reasons why you might want to keep your Foursquare profile private. Do you, after all, really want to tell your future employer that your spent all those weeknights at the local bar?
Privacy Concerns: The Limiting Factor for Location-Based Networks?
More importantly, though, this service highlights the privacy implications of regularly broadcasting your location. Some people are willing to take the risk and are perfectly fine with broadcasting their location and services like Foursquare reward these check-ins with virtual badges and real-world discounts for their most active users. For a lot of people, however, sharing location data takes online transparency one step too far.
Ultimately, the success of location-based networks will be limited if they can't find ways to make users feel safe when using these services.
How to Stay Safe?
If you really feel the need to share your location with the whole world, then you have to accept the risks. This isn't just limited to location-aware applications, though. Posting Twitter updates from your vacation also make it pretty obvious that you are not at home.
When it comes to location-aware services and geo-social networks, we prefer services that allow their users to send location updates privately to a select group of friends and trusted contacts. BrightKite - one of the older geo-social networks - for example, allows you to set very granular privacy controls on a per-post level. Of course, you could always resort to using a completely anonymous service like BlockChalk or a permission-based one-on-one service like EchoEcho, but with these, you can't update your friends about what bar to meet them at either and the social aspects of these services are limited.
It would also be nice if these services allowed users to select the level of granularity of their check-ins. While this won't discourage burglars (and doesn't work for FourSquare-like apps), being able to just point to "Houston, TX" as your location instead of the actual hotel your are staying in could alleviate the fears of a lot of users.
The Dangers of Mixing the Virtual and the Real World
PleaseRobMe points out the dangers of location-based social networks. Services like Foursquare, Brightkite and Google Buzz bridge the gap between the virtual world of social networks and the real world, which is something we are not accustomed, to. It's easy to think that the information we share online doesn't have any influence on the real world, but PleaseRobMe makes it pretty clear that there can be real-world consequences to sharing your location.
What Do You Do?
What is your policy for staying safe on location-aware social networks? Do you avoid them at all cost? Do you think that the positive aspects outweigh the potential risks? Do you use a pseudonym and a fake avatar? Let us know in the comments.
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Check in when you leave. Then you still get the cred and you can also catch anyone trying to rob you when you get home!
I've thought about this for a few years, since I've always been pretty transparent about sharing my life online. I try to be circumspect about broadcasting, say, that I'm going to be out of town for a week. I realize that the chances of burglary are only very slightly higher, but it's still something for people to think about.
Regarding PleaseRobMe.com (which is this is a hilariously awesome and thought provoking idea), there seems to be a disconnect in going from "@jrandomtwitteruser is not at home" to "this is @jrandomtwitteruser's home address, which is now empty). I'm sure a resourceful thief could figure that out, but PleaseRobMe would make a bigger impact with their point (and be a whole lot scarier) if they included the user's home address with the fact that they're not at home. Maybe a Google Maps link to "get directions to robbery". :-)
I'm more concerned about someone sitting outside of my home watching to see when I leave than I am about someone following my foursquare updates.
WOW, people are only realizing this now. Broadcasting geolocation is a thefts newest tool once they get access.
Example:
1. ME: Just got home THEFT: Thanks! Joe Smith lives on Park Ave in NYC.
2. ME: Eating at ... THEFT: Dang, he's only 10 min. from home
3. ME: At a conference all day THEFT: Time to make some $$$
4. ME: I'm at the Olympics in Vancouver :) THEFT: Time to clean house and make some mad $$$ :)
It's CRAP.
I'm sorry - this is no different then someone "casing" your house. For someone to stalk you via social networks to rob your house would actually take MORE effort than just picking a house and waiting for someone to leave.
Let's use my favorite thieves ever - the guys from Home Alone. They waited around and waited for other people to leave. That's what "good" thieves do. They find your patterns and play off of that.
For someone to rob me because of social they would have to know me or specifically want to target ME. Why would a thief waste his time doing that? Why couldn't he simply just go to a neighborhood, find a dark and obviously unoccupied home, and break in. I think we're giving people way too much credit.
Here's the deal - I use @foursquare all the time. I challenge someone to rob me. If you're successful, I won't even press charges. Good luck.....
~GS
That site is so ridiculous. With Foursquare, the only ppl that see where/when you've checked in somewhere are your FRIENDS (unless you're broadcasting with Twitter updates). Ideally you are not friend-ing anyone who isn't actually a friend. If you happen to get robbed while you're out 4squaring around, your list of suspects is right in the palm of your hand.
I think PleaseRobMe is doing a great thing by calling attention to the dangers of oversharing online. I also think they're being wildly irresponsible by actually showing the people who are checking in. It's all fun and games until some actually DOES get robbed because of this.
They could make the same point in a more responsible way by not showing the user's Twitter username, and by not linking to their profiles. They'd still make the point about how many people are exposing their info, without actually jeopardizing people's property and safety.
Professional criminals are already WAY ahead of everyone on using social networking to find potential targets. They use Facebook to find people who post photos of gorgeous houses, cross-reference names and locations to pinpoint actual address, and monitor status updates and other social info to know when the person is going away.
Going on a ski trip for a few days? Think it's fun to post a Twitpic of you in the ski lift? Congratulations ... you just told the criminal that you're not only not home, but that you're on vacation and will be gone for days.
This is already happening. A friend of mine had his car broken into in front of his house a few months ago. The cop who took the report found out that my friend worked on the Internet, and cautioned him about this very thing. They're seeing it happen more and more every day.
There's a UK Home Office report on burglary which may provide some perspective (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs04/r249.pdf). Some of the key points:
* The main reasons given by interviewees for starting burgling were the influence of friends, the need to fund drug use and boredom, and need of money for drugs was the main reason given for more recent burglaries.
* For the majority, the intention to burgle was formulated well in advance, while the specifics of the burglary, such as the precise target and the methods to be used, were decided later.
* Over half of those asked (36 out of 69) said that, during their most recent burglary, they had spent no more than ten minutes inside the property.
I have a really hard time picturing crack addicts avidly watching a computer screen, monitoring feeds for possible burglary opportunities. Plus, they don't need you to be on vacation, they need you to be away for a couple of hours. They can do that when you're at work, and that's a lot easier to predict.
As GS said, its far too easy to drive through a neighborhood you are already targeting, and easily pick homes where there is clearly no one home to rob.
If I use online media to say I'm not home, you then as a robber, have to figure out where I live, see if I even live in your country/state/city, hope I don't live with anyone (my house is rarely ever empty of people), hope I don't have a security system like ADT (I do), hope I don't have a dog that will rip your head off when you come in, hope I used my correct address for my home address (which I don't), hope my home is worth robbing, and hope I don't get home before you do all that, break in and get away. All kind of pointless when you can just drive through a neighborhood and rob a house that clearly is safe to rob and meets all the criteria. It's a crapshoot if you use online monitoring to pick your targets.
The only crime "Please Rob Me" is guilty of is articulating what we say everytime we overshare our geolocations.
I think some guys are looking to capitalize on the popularity of this trend. People who have anything of worth should have security systems or dogs on property to prevent theft. On the other hand, these apps are not for everyone especially the paranoid. Ideally, you only accept a friends invite to share on these apps. These are apps that use GPS features and make it easy to be found by your friends. Besides, the people that follow me on twitter are not always neighbors or even residents of my state for that matter. I believe these guys are getting way too much credit and publicity for exploiting fear based concerns.
@george yeah, you're right, it's crap and by crap we mean no different than casing your house, minus all the pesky driving by and lurking in shadows with trenchcoats while you're at SXSW or some other conference.
@lara it's usually someone you know who burgles; our 'know' these days is just different.
BTW, people are only talking about the robbery angle, not the rape or harassment angle, or the kids angle, or half a dozen other angles. I found one famous blogger whose cute adorable PARENTS were the weak link in the chain. So it's not always about what YOU do (or don't do).
People get scared and some of those people are probably some the same ones who thought RWW was Facebook, heh.
When it comes time to vote on some twitchy senator's legislation? Might not vote the way you like. There are more panicked Normals than socnet geeks.
@josh We saw how people LOVED HateMaps (the anti-gay marriage contribution/google map mashup) (/sarc)
interesting story. I agree with the fact that the practical use of the service is fairly minor compared to the average home invader today.
But one doesn't have to look back very far (e.g. there was a spate of hollywood celebutard robberies connected to information gained from social networks)
I think the important issue here (as Frederic sort of points out) is not whether your particular location update tweet will cause your house to be burgled TODAY (the likelihood is of course not - especially right now - when the location based services don't have that many users) - but instead what will happen when these service shift into the mainstream.
Privacy was one of the key considerations for us with echoecho (as it happens so was ease of use but that's another discussion) - which is ultimately why we went in the direction of location sharing rather than broadcasting.
I mean at the end of the day sure - broadcasting your location is nice - but if you need umpteen layers of privacy filters in order to feel comfortable using it - maybe there's something wrong with the assumptions of the service...
* Yeah and don’t go to work each day because people will know your at work and not at home.
* Don’t tell your friends that your going out for a drink on friday night.
* Need I go on…
Are you serious? It’s called common sense.
Nothing good comes of this site. Only bad.
The creators of the web need to realize that every single thing we create and say here can make the web better, or worse. This just made it a tiny bit worse.
Maybe if the authors of pleasrobme.com spent a bit of their technical prowess on writing better oAuth libraries, or maybe preparing a presentation on how to code more secure social applications, we'd all be better off for it. Instead, we get to imagine just how bad people *could* take advantage of us if they wanted to.
FUD won't help anyone!
Reading this has made me very worried. If I'm at work and someone calls me at home, and I don't answer, this might give away the fact that I'm not at home.
What should I do? Stay at home? Hire someone to sit in my lounge and answer the phone and pretend to be me in case a thief calls to check whether I'm at home?
was it wise to spend an hour at the Apple Store...second favorite place behind Barnes and Noble. Waiting to get picked up at the Genius Bar :)
Although it is not likely to be substantially more robberies, will certainly help to some extent. Part of the concert, that if you put your contacts on Facebook, so that the problems seen in public not to ask, but speaking from experience, I would not break anyone.
Weo also blogged about it. In german actuallyy ;)
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