People tell me “you shouldn’t be noisy about your location in status updates, because it lets criminals know where you are (and when you are not home.)”
Sure.
But I remind them once a “Web 2.0” service sprouts that identifies low hanging fruit for crooks, we just need to be quieter than average. A website that shows locations (or whole neighborhoods) unoccupied, with geo-tagged photos of the valuables from Flickr, with valuations from Amazon & Zillow, wrapped up all nice in Google Maps (with driving directions & get-away times!) is a gimme for any mashup developer. A Home Alone burglar-type who wasn’t already stalking you (the old-school methods for which work regardless) is going to use that app and pick the juicy opportunities, not follow you on Twitter or Buzz or Brightkite to figure it out… because you aren’t necessarily the heist of a lifetime.
Well, part of this prediction has come to pass at pleaserobme.com. They got the domain, anyway, if not all the functions my obnoxious evil twin devised:
Fast forward to 2011, when someone unveils a threat scanner (not unlike a virus scanner) to tell you when to lay low, as well as a location scrambler for As-Seen-On-TV crowd.
