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I Use Twitter, Please Rob Me
nk497 writes "Developers looking to prove a point about the information people are sharing on social networking sites have unveiled a new tool called Please Rob Me. It hunts out tweets from people who are also using location-based services telling the world that they're out of town, and then directs the world to go rob their house. The creators of the site said: 'Don't get us wrong, we love the whole location-aware thing. The information is very interesting and can be used to create some pretty awesome applications. However, the way in which people are stimulated to participate in sharing this information is less awesome.' How long until the first actual robbery takes place?"
Thank you Please Rob Me! My new LED TV is awesome!
I sense some legal trouble for these guys in the near future..
This isn't news. People's houses are cleared out regularly due to their Facebook status.
doesn't mean you should.
It is one thing for unscrupulous behavior to happen, it is another to encourage it. Their motives may be "pure" in that they are trying to bring awareness about what people know about you and what "could" happen. That doesn't mean it should happen. Not everyone is a crook and we should all strive to not be crooks, it is better for everyone. There used to be a time when everyone left there doors unlocked and trusted the community to not rob them. Now the community is encouraging people to rob people. The issue isn't people sharing their information, its people like these guys who are just being ass holes. We shouldn't have to hide our information, people should just respect each other enough not to steal their stuff.
The site doesn't tell you whether everyone in the household is gone, only if one person in the household is gone. A robber would still have to peek in the windows and do whatever it is robbers do to make sure the house is empty. But they could do that just by walking around some random neighbourhood and peeking in random windows; they don't need Twitter to tell them to peek into someone's windows.
But if this raises awareness, full steam ahead. People need to figure out that if they have minute-by-minute updates of where they are and what they are doing, all of which is publically available, they will sooner or later have consequences.
Moreso than robberies: I'm surprised we don't have rapes because of this, i.e. a girl tweeting while drunk.
Yet Another Tech Blog
(but so much more, including game and movie reviews)
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Pretty long odds for the itchy trigger finger set... They'd soon get bored waiting and try to sweeten the pot.
12:00 - leaving 4 grandmas, back in 2 weeks
16:00 - plenty of beer in the fridge for when I get back tho, hope it doesn't get skunky
18:00 - crap, left my rolex on the nitestand
21:00 - crap, wife left her diamonds
22:00 - crap, left the keys in the door
22:30 - crap, left the keys in the truck too
22:45 - crap, told the neighbor some moving guys were coming by around midnight
oh, ghod, no, please, not "twobbery" . It's enough to make one give up the English language.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
He wanks as high as any in Wome !!!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I hear insurance companies quietly whispering about new schemes to monitor their customer's twitterfeeds and deny claims based on homeowner liability.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
This is exactly the point. Computers didn't enter the workplace so that people could suddenly do things that they couldn't do before. Computers simply made those work activities more efficient and effective. The same is true for other uses of computers. Using computers in crime doesn't mean crimes occur where they couldn't before, just that the criminals are more efficient and effective.
Besides, someone using old-fashioned casing techniques would assume that my house is empty right now because I normally leave for work at 6:45. However, someone using modern casing techniques (if I were a Twitter/Facebook/Foursquare user) would know that I'm working from home today.
This kind of technology takes much of the risk out of burglarizing homes.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
>Mikepruett
>Mike Pruett | Rochester, MN
>@WheresKiger Just eat at a new fast food place called Nupa Express on 11thAve NW and Civic Center Drive it was GREAT 11:12 PM Sep 15th, 2009
>Domain name: PLEASESUEME.COM
>Pruett, Mike mlt@mltgroup.com
>4012 5th Place NW, Rochester, MN 55901
Give him a call to tell him you appreciate being able to track him: 507-281-3490
1. It needs to be "please burgle me". If you aren't at home, then you are being burgled, not robbed. A robbery is theft with violence or the threat of violence (at least in English law - Theft Act 1958 - it is). If nobody is at home, then nobody can be the victim of violence or the threat of violence. So your home is getting burgled - or, if you are an American, burglarized (what the hell kind of a word is that, right?).
2. PleaseRobMe seems to be built around the premise that one home = one person. If you know where I live, please be assured that I am currently not at my home. But other people live where I live. Families exist. Flat sharing exists. Communal living exists. (Yeah, go and raid the kibbutz - I'm sure it'll be empty!) This may be true for Web 2.0 valleyboys. It's not true of the rest of the planet.
That said, this kind of thing does show why most location-based services are stupidly designed. I have played around with a few of them, and the only one I'm a real big fan of is FireEagle. Sadly, it's been a bit neglected for business reasons - i.e. Yahoo! financial situation. What is great about FireEagle is you share you location with FireEagle, and they then share it with whatever services you want to share it with. So, I have the little iPhone app which updates FireEagle. FireEagle knows exactly where I am. Then there's a Facebook app which connects to FireEagle, but I don't necessarily have to let it broadcast my location if I don't want it to. Or I can only give a vague location - perhaps at a country or city level. I have it wired in to my SSH setup, so if I SSH in to my Linux box from certain places, it updates my location. Because it is a location broker, it can be updated in any way people think of, rather than having to use a specific application (say, for the iPhone) like FourSquare etc. do.
This is useful as I can build applications that sit on top of it. One I have been meaning to build is a "remind me when I'm at X" app. So I could basically dump a string (SMS/tweet length) into a database with a broad location in it. It could check against my location and when they match, I could be reminded of X. Remember to buy ice cream when I'm at the supermarket - well, when I'm at the supermarket, I should get a text message saying to buy ice cream.
Location-based services shouldn't be tied to devices but to people. This is what everyone gets wrong. They need really good granular privacy controls. They need a big "forget me" option. This is something Google Latitude doesn't have. There is no way I have found to tell Google Latitude "Hey, take me off the radar. I'm not anywhere anymore."
When I have some time to build it, I'd love to build something like FireEagle but running on my servers and just for me. Location is too important, useful and fun to trust Google or Yahoo! or some venture-backed Valley startup with. But if you are building location-based services, look at FireEagle and learn.
catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }
Oh my god! It's coming right for us!