This is something that’s been bothering me for a while: with all the push toward lifecasting, should we worry that criminals are going to get a little smarter? I saw a tweet today that really got me over the edge to write this post.
I first got antsy about TMI online when I was reading Scoble’s blog. He wrote a post a few years back divulging his home address (at the time), and I for one thought he was a bit nutso to do it (that nutso quality is probably a part of why he’s so likeable). I see tweets from him (and others) constantly revealing two important pieces of information:
- The fact that they are not at home.
- An easy tie-in to a specific location/event they have recently attended.
Both are better bait to criminals than personal injury videos on YouTube are to drunk college kids. They are basically open invitations for bad people to do bad things. Break-ins. Thievery. Identity theft. etc. I totally understand the desire to lifecast private details, and I occasionally slip myself. It’s easy, and I think the more in a rhythm you get of publicizing your information, they more you get “sucked into” doing it.
Examples:
- Robert Scoble in NYC yesterday
- Tom Raftery in Barcelona right now
- Me a couple of weeks ago
- Alec Saunders just as I began to write this post
My recommendations to anyone and everyone who tweets, pounces, jaiks, friendfeeds, blog posts, facebook statuses, and any other form of lifecasting is to think twice before you write. Recognize that your message is going into the public, in a permanent and very findable manner.
I believe it’s only a matter of time before we see tweets like “just got home, where the F is my plasma?!?” It sucks to think this way, but it’s giving me a little wakeup call myself. Guess we may all need crowdsourced home security one day.
Now signing off from an undisclosed location. I hear there’s a car nobody’s watching at SFO…