#Geostalking

Most people who use social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook know that they can be very useful for keeping in touch with large groups of interested people -- which makes them great online marketing tools.  Unfortunately, the wide reach of social media sites can be exploited by those who wish to do you harm.  If you use any such tool on a mobile device (and even on a laptop or desktop, depending on the service), be aware that your posts can be geotagged.  This means that your current location will be annotated to your post when it is made.  If you routinely make posts from familiar locations such as your favorite coffee shop or home, then you may be broadcasting the perfect location to find you.  This can make the sensible precautions you take to protect yourself useless.


If you use any such site for marketing (and there's no reason not to), please be aware of the geotagging feature, and disable it if you do not want your current location to be reported.  You can add a location to a particular tweet or status update if you want people to see where you are, but as a rule you should disable this feature.  Fortunately, Twitter's geotagging feature is disabled by default (read more here), but your phone may automatically geotag photos it takes, which can then be tweeted with the information included (read more here and here).  So check all of your devices and services for geotagging, and make sure you are in control of how your location is reported.