Listing All Those Empty Homes Out There

Image via CrunchBase

I'm sure that you have seen the 'Keep it Safe. Keep it Hidden. Keep it Locked' commercials that provide useful advice on how best to keep your property safe. Basics like shutting windows and locking car doors even when you are only gone for a minute, or keeping your eye on your bag, can be all that it takes to prevent crime. There's another element involved now as through the increased popularity of location-based services and check-in games, we're advertising to the everyone when we're away from our homes.

Please Rob Me has a humorous approach, providing a stream of updates from various location-based networks that shows when users check-in somewhere that is not their home. They state that the intention is not, and never has been, to have people burgled. The point is to raise awareness about this potentially dangerous location-based issue.

From the site -

The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you're definitely not... home. So here we are; on one end we're leaving lights on when we're going on a holiday, and on the other we're telling everybody on the Internet we're not home. It gets even worse if you have "friends" who want to colonize your house. That means they have to enter your address, to tell everyone where they are. Your address.. on the Internet.. Now you know what to do when people reach for their phone as soon as they enter your home. That's right, slap them across the face.

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. Because all this site is, is a dressed up Twitter search page. Everybody can get this information.

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• Please Rob Me Makes Foursquare Super Useful For Burglars (techcrunch.com)
• Please Rob Me.Com Lets Burglars Know When You're Not at Home (neatorama.com)