Tommy Collison

Do you remember I explained how Foursquare worked earlier this month?

It’s come under fire from a new website for the (supposed) burgling opportunities it provides — PleaseRobMe searches Twitter for tweets containing containing FourSquare checkin information (you can give FourSquare to automatically publish a tweet when you log in somewhere) and it takes it that since you’re out and about, burglars can take advantage of that fact and rob you.

Two assumptions are made here:

#1 – That where you live is in the public domain. I blog a lot but my house location isn’t online. I haven’t added it as a FourSquare location (I’m not that insecure that I need to be mayor of my own abode) either. So just because someone might know I’m not at home when I tweet “En route to Dublin” or someone sees I checked into Cappagh Hospital.

#2 – That when I’m not at home, the house is empty, which is not always true.

The whole debate of ‘will FourSquare get my house robbed?’ is more a bigger question on the pros and cons of location sharing in general. Your location is sensitive information and people should be careful with who and when they share it.

Don’t forget that FourSquare is different to Twitter in that you need to be friends with someone to see their checkins — and for that they need to be approved. Also, if I wanted to go to La Cucina for some rocky road goodness in secret, I could choose ‘no’ when it asks me if I want to share the location of the place I’m checking into with my friends. That way, I still get the points and whatnot but all my friends see is “Tommy C checked in @ [off the grid]” instead of “Tommy C checked in @ La Cucina” and the Rocky Roads stay secret :)