A few months ago I wrote an article titled Digital Stalking – Are You Sharing too Much?
Well fast forward to a few days ago, a writer (Pam Vlieg) was assaulted in San Francisco. The unknown assailant broke off the side mirror on her car and slammed her against the steering wheel. Luckily, she had her dogs in the car and one of them bit the angry man.
What does this have to do with technology and social media? Pamela Vlieg works for a literary agency. As it turns out, the man was a disgruntled writer whose work was turned down by Ms. Vlieg. She blogs and tweets as BookaliciousPam. She believes the man may have tracked her down by focusing on her social media habits and possibly learned her daily routine by using her frequent FourSquare location updates to pinpoint where she might be at any given time of the day.
Vlieg like many other people have become very comfortable (perhaps too comfortable) with living online using FourSquare, Facebook, Twitter and Google+. I am not saying these services are inherently bad. However, you do not need to share your entire life with the world. I think back to a man in Denver who put on his Facebook page that he and his family were going to Italy for a vacation. They came back to an empty house…crooks saw the Facebook posting and went and robbed the house.
Please be careful about what you share and who you share it with. Bad guys use the Internet as well.
