I saw this article in today’s Metro newspaper and couldn’t agree with it more.

Twitter users could be making themselves easy targets for burglaries by revealing their whereabouts online, security experts are warning.

Those who ‘tweet’ about when they will be away from home and for how long make it easy for criminals to rob them.

Former police officer Tony Neate, managing director of security campaign group Get Safe Online, said people must not hand crooks a ‘brief about themselves’ in their Twitter updates.

The warning comes after a man who posted details of his family break on Twitter was burgled.

Israel Hyman wrote that he was ‘preparing to head out of town’ and had another ‘ten hours of driving ahead’.

‘Did I really want to tell the world that I was out of town,’ the American said. ‘Because the card in my camera automatically added location data to my photos, anyone who cared to look at my Flickr page could see my computers, my bicycle and my large flatscreen TV all pinpointed on an online photo map.

‘Hell, with a few clicks you could get driving directions right to my place – and with a few more you could get black gloves and a lock pick delivered to your home.’

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for software company Sophos, added: ‘Some people are always saying what they were doing like “Queuing at Tesco”, “At Terminal 3 at Heathrow”.

‘You are telling people you are out of your house. People need to be more sensible.’

The problem with status updates on Twitter, as opposed to a service like Facebook, is that your twitter posts are there for the whole world to see as opposed to just friends and family.  If you do use Twitter or have a completely public facebook profile be careful because this could happen to you.

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