'Please Rob Me': The website that shows you're not at home

With the tongue-in-cheek name of PleaseRobMe, a new site aims to show how reckless some people are with the information they freely give out...

Marie Claire Health News: Woman using laptop
Marie Claire Health News: Woman using laptop

With the tongue-in-cheek name of PleaseRobMe, a new site aims to show how reckless some people are with the information they freely give out...

With the tongue-in-cheek name of PleaseRobMe, a new site aims to show how reckless some people are with the information they freely give out online.

Sharing your every move with friends and family on social networking sites is an increasingly popular pastime. But providing minute-by-minute updates on sites such as Twitter has also made it far easier for users to become victims of crime, according to a new website.

Social networking crazes such as Foursquare, in which users post their location online, are a goldmine for potential burglars, the website's founders said.

The Please Rob Me website says: 'Our intention is not, and never has been, to have people burglarized.' Instead they are trying to alert people to the danger of putting too much information on the world wide web.

The Dutch website channels information from other networking sites like Twitter into one place, listing 'all those empty homes out there' and providing a running total of 'new opportunities'.

'We're leaving the lights on when we're going on a holiday, but we're telling everybody on the internet we're not home,' said co-founder Frank Groeneveld, 22. 'The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you're definitely not - home.'

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