Now We Need to be Afraid to Use Geolocation Services????

I went out on Saturday night, seriously…way out, in fact I’m still feeling it today. If you follow me on Twitter you might know this because I checked in on Foursquare repeatedly and sent the notification to Twitter. I do this for two reasons; one, to support local business by letting others know where I like to go. And two, in case a friend is at the same place we can maybe chat for a bit.  I don’t always send the notifications to Twitter mostly because I don’t want to be annoying with them.

When I woke up the next morning I had a reply/warning from my brother in law regarding location based check ins. ( I am sorry dude but I am going to throw you under the bus here.) The article was warning me and all others that when we use services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and then broadcast our whereabouts to our Twitter stream that we are inviting someone to rob us. All I can say is….really? REALLY?

Let me start by saying this, just because I am not home doesn’t mean that there isn’t anybody home. That being said, I’d like to see you try to break into my home with its leaded glass widows and security system. You couldn’t get in without setting off the system and then you’d have about 5  minutes to pull out what you wanted before the police got here. What’s that you say? Not everyone has  leaded glass windows and a security system? Yes, you are right. But let’s keep in mind that we aren’t dealing with the cast of Ocean’s 11 here. Most break ins aren’t committed by genius’s.

I equate this paranoia to that of the “don’t say on your answering machine that you are going out of town because you’ll get robbed” type of thinking. Is it possible, absolutely is it likely absolutely NOT.

For me, the biggest safety hazard isn’t that someone will break into my house while I’m gone, it’s that someone will show up where I am at for reasons that may not be on the up and up. That’s why I only check in and tell Twitter when I am with a group of people.

I’m not going to not use geolocation services just because I’m afraid I’ll get robbed any more than I would stop traveling because I am afraid of a terroist attack.  Yes, these things can happen, and yes these services might make it slightly (very slightly) more likely to happen but I would argue that the benefit far out weighs the danger.

See Also: 8 Things Stalkers, Psycho-Ex’s and Burglars Love about Social Media