Friday’s Food for Thought: Please Rob Me; Are We Too Open With Personal Data?

Welcome to the Friday’s Food for Thought post on the ITAC blog. A new, and rather funny spoof web site called PleaseRobeMe.com, has shed some light on a very serious topic: how we too often open with our personal data. Basically, PleaseRobMe.com aggregates publicly shared check-ins from when people share their location data via Google Buzz and Foursquare, which basically lets the bad guys know that you are not at your house.

So, does sharing too much information – especially about your location — make you vulnerable to being robbed? Well, check out this Mashable story where this actually happened to a person. That is right…a few Tweets about going on a vacation can leave you totally exposed to a burglary.

And, what about people who actually prefer to leave their houses unlocked? Believe it or not, there are people in large cities like NYC and San Diego who do just that – they don’t lock their houses/apartments. Check out this article in the NY Times about this phenomenon. And, the article points out that a 2008 survey by State Farm Insurance of 1,000 homes across the country reported that fewer than half of those surveyed always locked their front doors.

Wow. Not locking your doors and telling the world that you are not home. Man, we are going to re-think what we do for a living and pursue a career in the burglary arts. The opportunities are endless (kidding of course!).

Happy Friday!