We all have that friend who shares too much. When social interaction was mostly by phone or face-to-face, that was merely an annoyance. But now that friends connected to the social networking universe.
First of all, that firend is more likely than your other friends to be, shall we say, promiscuous, in a social networking fashion. He or she's more likely to connect with people he or she doesn't know, with whom he or she has no common personal or professional interest, to befriend strangers. And that friend is also like to continue the habitual oversharing, just now with the entire Internet instead of just you on the phone at two o'clock in the morning when you just want to get some sleep for godsake.
That friend is the educational target of PleaseRobMe.com. See, all this Twitter and Foursquare and Facebook info tells people a lot of stuff. If you're the Foursquare mayor of the Starbucks at the Eaton Centre, you're telling people a dangerous piece of information: YOU'RE NOT HOME.
“The goal of this website is to raise some awareness on this issue and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz etc.,” write the people behind ForTheHack, creators of the Web site, on their,um, Website. “Because all this site is, is a dressed up Twitter search page. Everybody can get this information.”
PleaseRobMe has received all the right sort of attention from media types, and the site is going straight. “We want to offer this website to a professional foundation, agency or company that focuses on raising awareness, helping people understand and provide answers to online privacy related issues,” the creators write. “If you're such a foundation, agency or company, contact us.”
