Daily Dose of Common Sense

Twitter allows users to send up-to-the minute messages about what they are doing. But if you’re traveling, is it wise to tell a large group of strangers that you aren’t home?

@joeschmo The wife and I are in Hawaii and loving it!

USAToday spoke to a man whose home was recently burglarized while he was away on vacation. He has over 2,000 followers on Twitter and sent frequent updates to the site while on his trip. The robbery could be random coincidence, but he suspects not.

One of the great benefits of Twitter is that you can follow anyone and vice versa. However, unless you keep your updates private and only allow friends to see your timeline, you don’t know who could be listening. Putting too much personal information in your social media, especially something that could put you or your home at risk, might not be wise.

Chances are, your followers on Twitter aren’t criminals who are plotting against you. But, it doesn’t hurt to be a little guarded with your personal information, either. Remember the old advice of never leaving an outgoing answering machine message that states you are out-of-town? Maybe it’s time to update the idea to include for new technology.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 at 2:24 pm and is filed under Social Media, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.