Social media has put us all literally in the public eye. Every time you post a picture or status update to Facebook, make a tweet, check-in to a location, etc, you could be sharing your location with potentially a huge audience. Here’s why that’s not always a good thing.
Where You Are and Where You Aren’t
Not only does your social media status update or location check-in information tell somebody where you currently are, but it also tells them where you aren’t. This information can be just as dangerous in the hands of criminals—particularly when you post enough data to identify patterns in your daily or weekly routines. Picture it: You’re enjoying the first vacation you’ve had in years, thousands of miles away in the Bahamas, and you want to brag about a fancy umbrella drink you just ordered. So, you post a picture of it to Facebook, Instagram, or some other site. Your friends chime in with comments. But, you also just told the world you’re thousands of miles and dozens of hours away from home. Now all a thief needs to do is rent a moving van and take whatever he wants from your house.
Geotagging Your Treasure
When you take a picture with your smartphone, you’re probably also recording the exact GPS location of whatever you’re taking a picture of. This process is called geotagging and it’s a thief’s favorite tool. When you first set up your phone, you probably answered “yes” when the camera app asked permission to record the location of the pictures you take. Geotagging further narrows down your location. While your status update gives your general location, your geotagged picture gives a much more precise location. The metadata associated with a photo can, with the right tools, be extracted from the image. Protect your privacy by disabling geotagging on your iPad or on your iPhone or Android smartphone.
Patterns of Victimization
Resist the temptation to think some criminal somewhere couldn’t possibly be interested in you or your possessions, even if he or she did accidentally stumble across your social media profiles. The real risk isn’t from total strangers. It’s from casual acquaintances or friends-of-friends who may already know who you are or what you own, but whom you don’t know well enough to trust with your location information. Or from vengeful ex-partners. Or from rivals at work or at the gym. Or the drug-addicted older brother of your babysitter. Or the creepy ex-con who lives three doors down. If you’re assaulted or burglarized, odds are good you’ll know the person who did it, assuming they get caught.
The Privacy of Others
Even if you’re not especially concerned about your own location privacy, if you tag other people in your social media posts, those people are now publicly exposed as being in a specific place at a specific time. And now the people you tagged are potentially at risk. Furthermore, you may not know that some of your friends might have private secondary concerns about their location—for example, because they have a jealous spouse, an open restraining order on someone, challenging child-custody or foster-parent situations, or even an eagle-eyed probation officer. Never assume other people will welcome the public sharing of their location. That’s why it’s always appropriate to ask permission to tag your friends or family before you post about them on social media.
