I Twitter, therefore please rob me

A group by the name of Forthehack has launched a website called Please Rob Me which serves to expose the security risk of location-aware online services such as Twitter and Foursquare.

It has opted to do so by listing all the empty homes that are available to be robbed by publishing a live feed of those Foursquare players who automatically post location updates to Twitter.

As I write this there are some 180 new opportunities' to rob someone, with Twitter usernames displaying exactly when these people left home.

So why am I publicising this? Because it's a really good idea in that it exposes the folly of sharing your location data, at all times, via services such as Twitter, Google Buzz and of course Foursquare to the world at large without a second thought to the security implications of doing so.

Some might argue that it is irresponsible to publish this data, but hang on a minute the whole point is that all this data is already in the public domain.

The irresponsible action is being taken by those choosing to put it their, not by those opting to remind them how stupid they are being.

Seriously, would you put an advert in the local paper saying I'm leaving my house tomorrow at 10am and won't be back for 3 hours' or such like?

I'm guessing the answer is no, yet plenty of people are quite happy to do the equivalent online in the name of being social, or playing a game. It really does beggar belief.