Wednesday, February 24. 2010

Update: Sharing the Geo Info You Make Public: Please Rob Me

Update: State Farm Insurance is far more cautious than Confused.com regarding raising insurance premiums:

"At this point, we kind of believe claims resulting from this activity will be minimal, but will continue to monitor the situation," said Rhonda Lynn Richards, Public Affairs Specialist for State Farm Insurance.

- WICZ

--- original post 2/19/10 ----

Many tech pubs have covered Please Rob Me an app from FortheHack; I heard about it on Wednesday's Buzz Outloud. That podcast made it clear the reason the for the site was not in fact to help folks find out when you are not at home via your social location check-ins, but rather to highlight how much information users of those services are sharing with the public at large. (I do not use any of those services at this time.)

The data for app comes from Foursquare and Twitter via their respective APIs. The data is already publicly available.

But, that's not the only geotagged info that might get one "in trouble." Per Infosecurity: Johannes Ullrich at the SANS Institute analyzed over 15 000 images from popular image hosting site Twitpic during February; 399 were geotagged.

As of Wed PleaseRobMe's twitter account was terminated.

Confused.com, an insurance site, says that insurance costs may rise 10% for those using such services.

- Infosecurity
- Money High Street