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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..
Sadly PleaseSueMe.com has already been taken, or they would've been able to set a new trend.
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
He wanks as high as any in Wome !!!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Moreso than robberies: I'm surprised we don't have rapes because of this, i.e. a girl tweeting while drunk.
I'm sure I'll be condemned to insensitive robot hell for this, but when I read that, my first thought was:
Q: What's the blonde mating call?
A: I'm SOOOOOOOOOO wasted.
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."
"Out shopping for a new aquariums for my rattlesnake collection. The last burglar knocked them over running from the German Shepherds. Don't look forward to finding all 10 snakes, either."
I can heartily recommend Trursday as the best day for theivery, as it's often overlooked.
>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
Their names look very Dutch to me (I'm Dutch myself), so I'm guessing the Netherlands (or perhaps Belgium).
You're probably right that "encouraging people to rob a specific person's house is actionable in every first world country". However, that's clearly not their stated intention - to the contrary, in fact.
In the Netherlands, if someone would start a lawsuit about this (could happen, sure), I'm guessing chances are pretty good that the judge will buy the argument of the website authors, especially since burglars can already trivially find the exact same information if they have two half-working brain cells, and their stated purpose is to actually make people aware of this obvious problem. In addition, whoever starts the lawsuit would probably first have to prove actual damages (e.g. being robbed), and that this was caused by this website, and even then there's the obvious counterpoint that they put this information online themselves in the first place, and it might have been trivially found without that website. The apparent intention (of the website authors) matters as well, probably more so than in the USA (this is just a feeling, I may be wrong).
So, it's hard to prove that a robbery was "caused" or "encouraged" by this website, even then it involved your own stupidity in putting that information publicly on the internet in the first place, therefore the chances of winning (as the person who got robbed) seem not that great. In addition to that, mostly everyone here has insurance covering their household effects, meaning they'd get (most of) the money back from an insurance company anyway, so why bother with the lawsuit.
Finally, if you lose, you typically have to pay the legal costs of the defending side - so starting the lawsuit is not without financial risk in the first place.
Much of this is probably also true in the USA, but the legal costs involved would be higher, and I somehow have a feeling, also the chances of losing. (IANAL, so I may be wrong about that.)
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'