Please Rob Me site reveals dangers of social networking

SAN FRANCISCO -- As more people reveal their whereabouts on social networks, a new site has sprung up to remind you that letting everyone know where you are -- and, by extension, where you're not -- could leave you vulnerable to those with less-than-friendly intentions. The site's name says it all: Please Rob Me.

Launched last week, Please Rob Me is exceptionally straightforward. Pretty much all it does is show posts that appear on Twitter from a location-sharing service, Foursquare. Please Rob Me puts these posts into a long, chronological list it refers to as "Recent Empty Homes."

Please Rob Me assembles its list by taking information that Twitter makes freely available so that many Web sites can show tweets. But the point of Please Rob Me could be made with data that flows on dozens of other sites as well.

People are comfortable sharing all kinds of personal details on social sites such as Facebook. And now people are flocking to location-based Web services, such as Foursquare, Gowalla or Loopt, that let them use their cell phones to alert friends to where they are.

This phenomenon is what motivated the creators of Please Rob Me, according to one of them, Boy Van Amstel, 25. Van Amstel said in a phone interview from Holland, where the site is based, that technology has become so easy to use that people are sharing too much online without even realizing it. He and his co-founders want people to think twice about it.