Archive for February, 2010

Guest Blog Post Published at CDT

By
Frank Groeneveld
 – February 25, 2010Posted in: Webapps

The launch of pleaserobme.com received a lot more media attention than we had expected. We were on a number of international radio stations, national television etc.

Furthermore, Adam Rosenberg of Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) asked us to write a guest blog post. Of course we were interested in doing so, because it gave us another opportunity to make people aware of the potential problems of sharing your location with the whole world. The post was pusblished today and can be read on the CDT website.

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Location spam, annoying and.. risky?

By
Frank Groeneveld
 – February 16, 2010Posted in: Webapps

Hey, do you have a Twitter account? Have you ever noticed those messages in which people tell you where they are? Pretty annoying, eh. Well, they’re actually also potentially pretty dangerous. I’m about to tell you why.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the whole location-aware thing. The information is very interesting and can be used to create some pretty awesome applications. However, the way in which people are stimulated to participate in sharing this information, is less awesome. Services like Foresquare allow you to fulfill some primeval urge to colonize the planet. A part of that is letting everyone know you own that specific spot. You get to tell where you are and if you’re there first, it’s yours. O, and of course there’s badges..

Foursquare Foursquare

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.

To raise some awareness on this issue and emphasize how easy it is to retrieve this information let me introduce: http://www.pleaserobme.com. Have fun and please don’t hook up Foursquare to your Twitter account, okay?

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