Please Rob Me: What’s the big deal?

There’s been a flurry of posts across the web about Please Rob Me, a site that aggregates check-ins on sites like FourSquare, illustrating the fact that we’ve known all along: people are willing to release more information than they realize. Outrage follows once the fact that technology allows information to be easily aggregated and distributed is demonstrated like this.

Why is there a concern? Either stop sharing that information with everyone (honestly, do all of your Twitter followers actually give a shit that you’re the mayor of Wal-Mart?) or learn how to manage the privacy settings that are incorporated into all of these sites. You can’t make the Internet less of a information distribution medium, because, quite frankly, that’s all the Internet is. You can’t expect to announce something to the world and not have someone listening.

PleaseRobMe.com doesn’t go far enough. Seesmic on the Blackberry reverse geocodes to my exact home address when I use the app in my house. If they aggregated all the available information from Twitter and foursquare, BrightKite, etc. then plotted it on the map, then it’d be more of a privacy concern. But still not a concern for those that manage their online presence wisely.