The Impact of Sharing Your Location Through Social Media

Last summer, I was out of town on a family vacation and I thought it'd be cool to tweet that. Later that day, while listening to This Week in Tech, one of the hosts mentioned the rise in house robberies after someone tweets that they're not home. I was horrified for the rest of the trip.

Thankfully, my house was not hit. However, sharing your location publicly through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare can be dangerous. Getting your house robbed is one thing; but what if someone you don't know decides to go and find you?

Please Rob Me is a website that aims to raise awareness about the dangers of sharing your location publicly on social media platforms. While they don't actually want people to use this site as a resource for who to rob, it very well could come in handy for a lot of bad things if used the wrong way. Through this site, you can see every Foursquare tweet in the world, or narrow down your search by location or Twitter user name. I was especially startled when I searched a local city and found people I knew on the first page. The sad thing is, I'm sure 99.9% of the people listed on this website have no idea that their tweets are being displayed on a site that indirectly encourages people to rob you, let alone the fact that your tweets are being displayed elsewhere at all.

We still have a long way to go before we can catch up with the technology and the ramifications of our actions. I'm not saying to stop playing Foursquare or never share your location. Just understand what you could be getting into when you put your location out there.