Facebook Places In New Hampshire Turns Into A Real-Life PleaseRobMe.com | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Places In New Hampshire Turns Into A Real-Life PleaseRobMe.com

techcrunch.com

17 pointsbond16 comments

Invest some of that ad money into actual editors, Techcrunch. My old state is spelled with a "p"!

In response to the content, I used to live in Nashua. It's a fairly sleepy little town without much crime in general, though some areas are becoming a little rough around the edges. A lot of people left their doors unlocked. I'd say broadcasting your current whereabouts to the world instead of merely your friends is a 21st century way of leaving your doors unlocked: it only works when everyone plays nicely.

I live in Nashua. I think we're still ranked 27th safest city in the US.

I wonder if this will eventually become a clause in insurance contracts: "If you broadcast publicly the fact that you aren't home, any subsequent robbery will not be covered." Hard to believe, but possible.

uh. no.

Because, if I so wished, I could post on FB places that I'm "at the movies with <whoever>".

I don't understand how this objection would defeat the clause in question?

I assume he meant that if <whoever>'s house was robbed, that could be problematic. Could my insurance company penalize me if you broadcast my whereabouts?

the idea is, you can't effectively stop what other people post about you. Sure, you can elect to not post anything showing your location, but other people can also elect to post stuff showing their location, as well as information indicating that you are with them.

That's why the clause would be, "If you broadcast publicly . . ." Obviously there'd be no way to enforce this if someone else broadcasted your location.

Techcrunch robbed New Hampshire of its p.

New Hampshire shouldn't have posted on Facebook that it was out partying with Maine and Delaware at Vermont's place.

Do you suppose someone's working on a system that recognizes valuable objects in geo-tagged photos, correlates that with Facebook/4sq checkins to figure out who lives with those objects and when they're not home, and produces a live feed of where the fleet of home burglary vans should go next? Kinda like the FedEx logistics system, but for evil.

This doesn't describe how they got the addresses of people to rob. Presumably, they robbed their Facebook friends. Regardless, there are easier ways to find out when people aren't home. Most people are at work during the day. Maybe you should randomize your work schedule to feel more secure.

There was an article in I think the Washington City Paper (probably not worth looking for it) a couple years ago about a couple of burglars who would just knock/ring the doorbell.

Actually, I suspect that the victims just shared their addresses with everyone.

You have to go out of your way to do that on Facebook. I doubt many people have addresses shared with everyone.

It's trivially easy to burgle a house. It's not so easy to get away with it. LBS seems like it would make things easier for burglars, but by Amdahl's Law, it's not much different from before. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law

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