8 Things Stalkers, Burglars and Psycho Ex’s Love about Social Media
Back in the old days of stalking and burglary, I imagine that criminals had to stake out locations and be a peeping toms to find out optimal times to be criminalish. But Social Media has changed all of that!! Now, it is sooo much easy to know when you are not home and where you have checked into. So, we have compiled 8 or so reasons that we think that you should think of prior to updating your status and blathering all over “teh interwebs”.
1. Burglars will just have to monitor your patterns, figure out your routine and come rob you! It’s brilliant!! Foursquare is a perfect tool for this. The Foursquare service allows you to check into random places, get badges and become the “mayor” of the area. Sure the tool is awesome, but it helps you tell us where you are ALL OF THE TIME… If we know WHERE you are… and if we know where you AREN’T… and that is home.
2. Stalkers love it because they can go coincidentally “meet-up” and spontaneously hang out where you are located. Maybe if they are lucky, while they are there, they can get a lock of your hair or something.
"She's got a great personality... "
3. OMG STALKEO!! Oops. I meant Spokeo. They are a great tool for stalkers and psychos. Check out this. If your stalker goes to this site, they can pay $3-$5 dollars and as long as the stalker has your email address, STALKEO will scour 43 social media network sites and collect all information associated with each email address. Blog entries, Linked In profiles, Flickr photostreams, Twitter tweets, Digg comments, your Friend Feed, Amazon wish lists – and a whole lot more – all on one tidy little Web page. And every time they add new content, Spokeo lets you know.
4. Stalkers and Psycho Ex’s love Facebook’s new privacy settings. Apparently, Facebook has Twitter-envy and wants to have real-time searchable statuses and be up to date and open!! Woo hoo!
5. Not so fast, Facebook, you dastardly doer. You’ve now empowered kidnappers! Unknowing targets of stalkeration will now have public images of them, their family, friends and potentially pictures of their children. Now, ne’er-do-wells can easily target which kids they need to give candy to outside the white van during recess.
6. Stalkers and Psychos like to set up false Social Media profiles and pretend to be you. They can totally assume your online identity and spread falsities about you, your family, your business, etc.
7. Psycho Ex’s like social media because you tell us when you are single, in a relationship, married or “it’s complicated”. Well, when the jealous ex sees you found someone new… they can use additional tools like STALKEO to find out information about the new love of your life… and where to go to “randomly” meet up for an epic psycho-ex / new-love duel to death in the octagon of retardation.
8. Psycho Ex’s, Stalker and random people LOVE LOVE LOVE Facebook’s info tab on the profile of all their friends. A vast majority of people have their job listed, their phone number, cell phone, e-mail address, screen name, campus post-office box and 153 pictures of her with friends and a her fucking boyfriend. Oh, sorry… got carried away. LMAO
9. Stalkers, Psycho Ex’s and heavy breathers on the phone like that with the Android OS, you can export your facebook friends phonenumbers to a folder on your phone where you can access any of your friends that have provided this information. This includes all of the people who you have never met and really have no earthly clue who this person is.
As you can see, there are many reasons to be careful with your information online. You never know WHO might stumble across your twitter profile, get connected on LinkedIn and Facebook… follow you on Foursquare and then try awful, awful things. There are a lot of idiotic, immature selfish people out there and so it is wise to protect yourself in whatever manner you can.
This article was written tongue-in-cheek, but this is why I never update my social media status on where I am, when I go out of town to conferences or vacation or on social media “check-in” sites like FourSquare or Gowalla. I figure it’s better to be safe than sorry.
The sad thing is, is there are probably many other ways that these idiots can use social media for. Use the comments below to enlighten us.
Wait, I promised you 8 things that stalkers, burglars and psycho ex’s love, but I gave you 9! I lied to you, does this surprise you? Mwh ah ahah ah aha. *cough.
Related posts:
- Foursquare Introduces Business Analytics Foursquare plans to distribute a free analytics tool and dashboard...
- Now We Need to be Afraid to Use Geolocation Services???? I went out on Saturday night, seriously…way out, in fact...
- Cc: How Social Media Killed Email Let's face it, if email was a movie character, it...
- What Social Media and Ike Turner Have In Common Here me out. I believe that education and how...
- Social Media: Is Your Identity Safe? The other day I was chatting online with an old...
Filed Under: Humor • Social Media • Twitter • Web Privacy
Fun stuff, Travis!
The way I tell it is that if I do not have an occasional death threat, I am not reaching enough people.
I have been in this Internet biz a very long time, and seen a lot. I recall a Web hosting client once threatening to come to my town and suck my blood. I looked at his site to find that he thought he was a vampire.
I recently had to report somebody to the FBI for threatening to kill me with a pipe bomb. Yep, a pipe bomb, and not the efficiency of a gun or knife. He spent an hour and fifty three minutes writing his comments on my blog. I guess the dude really has a lot of time on his hands to plan out killing me. The sad part is that he will likely never get famous killing little old me … unless he Facebooks and Twitters it.
Really, stalking me is a pretty lame way to spend your weekend, but it happens. See Cyber Bullying, Death Threats, and Other Cyber Crimes. It can happen to you, too!
I joke around, but if you Google "Internet Stalkers" you will find me pretty easily.
My recent post Shove Your Followers, I Want Disciples!
Since I have the whopper of all psycho ex's…this just makes my day.
Great.
Loooove this article, I don't even mind anymore when a potential love interest has stalked my blog, my twitter and my facebook. Stalking has just gotten so acceptable these days. It's almost odd not to cyber stalk…
If you must post, better to post where you were than where you're going.
Can you select the Psycho? Take the free psycho quiz below to check it out;
Click Here to Take The Psychos Quiz
Dating Psychos is a place to post what you know about your ex psychos
Click Here to Add and Check Out the Psychos
Pat
http://www.datingpsychos.com
ok so the comment about stalking becoming the norm scares the hell out of my hermit self. i certainly hope that’s not true, it makes me feel dirty. i won't join foursquare for the reason Travis states, don't want just anyone to be able to show up & bask in my greatness. kidding but i really don't like the idea of being tracked by anyone. kind of like "back up off me before i lose my shit and crush you like the little no life having turd that you are!" ya know? maybe its just me…… life's been interesting…..um, awkward.
I was totally going to write about this on mine!!!
Personally, I have had the 'luxury' of having a stalker for about the past 10 or 11 years. As a result, my tel number is unlisted, I've blocked him on Facebook and I'm forced to lock down my Twitter (although I do periodically unlock it). Breaking up with an ex and periodically 'checking' on them via social media sites is an innocent type of stalking, and only means you're fucked up and can't move on with your own life. (haha, i had to). That's fine – but the other kind of stalking is totally not cool and these mofo's need to get a life.
Great article Travis. I really enjoyed it.
[...] See Also: 8 Things Stalkers, Psycho-Ex’s and Burglars Love about Social Media [...]