ArchiveOriginally published 2010
Please Rob Me: The 2010 Site That Warned About Location Oversharing
For about a week in February 2010, a plain-looking Dutch website made the technology press very uncomfortable. Please Rob Me took public check-ins that people were broadcasting from a location app and listed them under a simple heading: recent empty homes. This site covered the outrage. Here is the story and what it changed.
On this page
What the site didWhy it caused outrageWhat changed afterwardThe habit that did not go awayCommon questionsWhat the site did
Location check-in apps were new in 2010, and many users set them to post every check-in to a public timeline. Please Rob Me simply read those public posts, filtered for the ones that said a person had left home, and displayed them in a live list with the person's name and the place they had gone. A search box let you look up any user. The site's copy was deadpan: it talked about all those empty homes out there and offered to help you find one. The developers said in interviews that they had built it to make a point about oversharing, not to help anyone commit a crime, and that they had deliberately used only data people had already made public.
Why it caused outrage
The reaction split three ways, and this site's post captured all of them. Some readers were angry at the developers for making the risk concrete. Some were angry at the app makers for defaults that made broadcasting a home's emptiness the path of least resistance. And a large number of people simply had not realised their check-ins were public at all, which was the developers' argument in one sentence. Within days the site had been covered by most major technology outlets and several national newspapers, and the phrase please rob me became shorthand for location oversharing.
| Year | Location sharing norm | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| 2009 to 2010 | Public check-ins broadcast to open timelines | Please Rob Me and similar demonstrations; press attention |
| 2011 to 2013 | Friends-only defaults spread; check-ins decline | Apps add privacy controls; photo geotags become the quieter risk |
| 2014 to 2018 | Continuous background location in many apps | Regulators and platforms add per-app location permissions |
| 2019 onward | Precise versus approximate location choices; prompts on each use | Location becomes a permission users manage, not a feed they publish |
What changed afterward
The site stopped listing check-ins within a few weeks, saying it had made its point. The longer effect was on defaults. Location apps moved toward friends-only sharing; social networks began stripping location metadata from uploaded photos; and phone operating systems eventually turned location into a permission that each app must request, with options for approximate rather than precise position and for sharing only while the app is in use. None of these changes was caused by one stunt, but the stunt gave the argument a name everyone remembered.
The habit that did not go away
Check-ins faded, but announcing an empty home did not. Holiday photos posted in real time, live-streamed travel, fitness apps that publish a running route starting at the front door, and marketplace listings with a home address in the background all do what the 2010 check-ins did. The lesson from Please Rob Me is still the practical one: post the holiday when you are back, keep fitness routes private or start them a few streets away, and check what an app shares by default before you trust it with your location.
On a phone, open the location permissions list and set each app to While Using or Never, and to Approximate unless it genuinely needs a precise position. On a laptop, check the browser's site permissions for location and remove sites you do not recognise.
Common questions
What was Please Rob Me?
A February 2010 website by three Dutch developers that listed public location check-ins as empty homes, to demonstrate the risk of broadcasting your location.
Was Please Rob Me illegal?
It used only publicly posted data and did not, as far as was reported, lead to any prosecution. It was widely criticised, and its creators framed it as an awareness project.
Is Please Rob Me still online?
The live listing stopped within weeks of launch. The domain and its message persisted for some time as a reminder.
Did it change anything?
It contributed to a shift toward friends-only and opt-in location sharing and became the standard reference in discussions of location privacy.
What is the modern equivalent risk?
Real-time holiday posts, public fitness routes that start at home, and apps with always-on precise location. The fix is the same: share later, share less, and check defaults.