I always knew the internet was a lot of things, but I NEVER thought anyone would use it with malicious intent. Well, my expectations have been shattered by a website that brings to light how easy it is for someone to stalk you / see when you aren’t home and then steal the things you love.

</sarcasm>

I feel like if you didn’t realize that constantly, publicly, announcing your location was grounds for being robbed raped and pillaged (arrr!) then you are and idiot.  I understand there are probably arguments out there against this being an issue, but what it all comes down to is making yourself an easy target.  You can say “well people can break in whenever they want” or “if they really want to steal from me they will be able to just see when I leave.”   This is true unless you are a CEO, famous athlete, JHM, etc and thus more of a target than a normal person.  Outside of fitting into that criteria, why should a person bother to care that other people know their name, address, when they are home, or other things?

Well.. if I am looking for a place to steal shit from, and there are two houses on a block, one with a sign on it that says “no one is home!” and one that has nothing posted.. which one will I go to?  Yeah, exactly.  A bit of an exaggerated point, but if you narrow your twitter feed, looking for people in a specific region that aren’t home, then use their twitter account to find their facebook, linked in, google account or anywhere else their address is posted.. you now have an open invite and can probably figure out exactly how much time you have to peruse their belongings based on where they are “checked in.”  Or, the best status message, “in Hawaii for a week!” shows them they have an entire week to scope the place out and pick the best time to walk in to steal your shit.

Everyone should furthermore appreciate this stupidity in light of how just a few short years ago everyone was worried about posting their LAST NAME online somewhere.. let alone addresses or phone numbers.  Amazing how we went from being tentative to state our last name on a profile or IM account, for fear they could look us up in a phone book.  <- remember those? I do, because they still freaking come to my house. But I digress, that is an argument for another day.

So we’ve moved from that mentality briskly into announcing every piece of contact information about ourselves and on top of that where we are at all times!  Besides being robbed, if a dude (you might not even know them, maybe they found your pic online and liked what they saw) wants to stalk you, find you at a bar or whatever, you are paving the road for them.  Nicely done.

I must be taking crazy pills here but I can’t be the only one who realizes how stupid this is right?!  People gobble shit shit up as soon as the newest ’social networking app’ is released.  Immediately adopting allows them to be on the forefront of whatever, and cooler cause they can say ‘oh I’ve been using it for months, its awesome you should check it out.’  Other reasons I can think of for using these apps in this manner include but are not limited to, bragging about what they are doing (I include myself amongst people guilty of this) and ‘everyone else doing it.’

I know there are probably more arguments against my point of view, so let me have it, I’m interested.  (And “getting points” or “being a mayor” on foursquare does not count.)