There's a lot of power in social media, but many tweet or update their status withouth thinking about what they are telling the world. This issue is especially acute when it comes to location-based information. If you're telling the world you're at your local Starbucks, you're telling everyone that you're not at home. Burglars may be interested in that, if they can match your tweets with your home address. A new website, Please Rob Me, vividly illustrates the issue. See also: Please Rob Me Makes Foursquare Super Useful For Burglars.
A shift in our society has occurred the past few years. We have gone from fearing the security of the internet to anything/everything goes, your nobody unless everything about you is transparent. There is little to no digital hygiene that is of any concern with many of the nets younger users. This is all they have known since High School, so it must be safe, secure, and no problem. I don’t know where this all nets out for privacy and society. Caution is still necessary, storage is unlimited and cheap and everything is connected.
ReplyDeleteHey David, I just spent the weekend at Pod Camp in Toronto, and this was a topic that was discussed by a few people. This is one of those things that people need to be much more aware of. Even worse if you put together the Please Rob me concept with a simple twitter search for lets say New purchases, or Laptops, Ibooks ect. You may even be creating a shopping list and a potential ROI could be taken into account that could make you a larger target. Maybe there should be some type of class regarding internet privacy that is taught as a intermediate or highschool manditory class where we can slowly ensure at the very least new social network users are aware of how this type of information can be used against you.
ReplyDelete