Burglars' jobs are made easier when you advertise you're away on vacation on Facebook or Twitter: "Can't wait til tomorrow! Going to France for a month!" "Hope our pooch Muffin won't miss us while we're in Italy for our anniversary, June 30" or "Here we are in Aruba!" with photo galore of you on the beach thousands of miles away from your nest.
Now, a British firm that does real-life security — brick-and-mortar fencing, human guards and patrols — is adding a virtual service: It will post pre-approved messages, updates and tweets that will be posted while clients are away from home. The company says it will charge a small fee to do so.
Precreate Solutions came up with the offering after hearing of clients who shared their vacation plans on the social networking sites and had their homes broken into.
"Putting up a Facebook posting of photographs on a beach to 300-400 ‘friends’ is like leaving an advert on your door to a burglar telling him when you will be out," Precreate Solutions president Gary Jackson told The Telegraph.
If you think you'd like to have a similar service to the one Precreate Solutions is offering, The Next Web points out that "a simple free tool such as HootSuite lets users schedule updates for a long time into the future themselves. So in terms of a social networking equivalent of ‘putting your hall-light on a timer’, this is all that’s really required."
Jackson maintains that “It’s getting to the point now when insurance firms are going charge higher premiums for social media users."
That isn't the case at all, said the Association of British Insurers. But it did offer simple, sage advice: Don't share that stuff on the Web.
— Via The Next Web
Related stories:
- Accused hotel-room wreckers post photos on Twitter
- Facebook photo prompts gunpoint robbery
- Burglar who posted on victim's Facebook pleads guilty
- Serial burglar finally caught ... because he forgot his cell phone
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