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Off On Holiday, House Is Empty. Enjoy!
When you are about to set off on holiday one of the most popular things to do is update your Facebook or Twitter status to something that will make your friends at work jealous. Whether it’s ‘having a cheeky pint in the airport lounge!’ or ‘just about to board the plane’ the urge to rub it in the faces of those left behind in the cold is sometimes overwhelming. As you take your seat on the place you may be feeling quite smug and excited to be jetting off for a fortnight in the sun; however who else knows that you won’t be in your home for two weeks? Although social networking is all about letting people know what you are up to, there may be some users that have an invested interest in just where you are. A new study has warned users that when they announce their holiday plans online, this news could easily reach the screens of opportunistic thieves.
Researchers examined the Facebook messages posted by those about to jet away on holiday, using their basic details on the site they managed to track down their exact addresses within 60 seconds. If you have made your surname, child’s school or even place of work public on the site, it is possible to cross reference these details with online address databases. Before you panic and start deleting everything from your profile page, the reality of the situation is that as long as you display common sense you will be fine!
Take the time to have a look at your current news feed, how many people are using the check-in service whenever they arrive in a different location or are posting personal messages? Would you offer this information to a room of strangers? I’m guessing probably not. The study also looked at how many people had friends or followers that they had never even met, out of 3,000 people interviewed a staggering 44% admitted to accepting friend requests off complete strangers.
The next time you go to post an update take a second to think about just who is on your friend list, it may save you a lot of hassle when you come back home to find your house ransacked after a two week break.