Social Networking May Cost You More Than Just Privacy
Many people today are involved in some sort of social networking on the internet. They use MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, among others, to keep in touch with friends and family, share pictures, and communicate with the world in general. But aside from the fact that they are essentially eliminating their own privacy, they might be risking more than they think, and their home owner’s insurance, of all things, may increase because of that.
Why home owner’s insurance you ask? Well, with new updates to these social media websites, as well as the dawn of smart mobile telephones that can access them, people are now able to post where they are and what they’re doing remotely. They can even do something called geo tagging, where they use the GPS chip in their phone to post their exact location on a virtual map. The problem arises when this information is uploaded to the site for anyone to see, thus alerting anyone able to view that information that you are not at home but you’re actually, “Getting a foot long sub from the deli,” or “Wow, the post office is so slow!” Any criminal smart enough to access this information can stake out the person who routinely posts what they’re doing when not in their home. That person inevitably leaves themselves completely open to burglary, and insurance companies may start monitoring this information as well to cover themselves should anything happen to the house when the owner is out.
While it seems like a crazy premise, it makes sense that the insurance companies would seek to protect themselves from their own policy holders who choose to act irresponsibly and eliminate their own privacy so nonchalantly. For those who continue to post their business on these sites while away from home, they’d better learn how to modify their privacy settings so that they can control who sees the information they upload or else they might come home one day to find a few broken windows, property missing, and an insurance company with a copy of their facebook updates tucked into folded arms.
To read the original article, please go to
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/22/facebook-twitter-users-co_n_471548.html