When I went on holiday recently I encouraged my friends (and you, my dear blog readers) to keep up with what I was doing via my posts to Twitter and photo uploads to Flickr, both of which were most easily followable on FriendFeed.  While I was glad that I could let people know what I was experiencing in Japan, a worry niggled at the back of my mind – burglars.  It’s a problem I’d forgotten about since getting back, until Tom Beardshaw reminded me today.

Now, if you’ve ever been away from home for more than a couple of days you’ve probably worried about people breaking into your house.   Until recently though, it’s unlikely that your location (and the likely emptiness of your house) has been broadcast publicly.  Many people in the ‘early adopter set’ have been happily posting frequent online updates about their current activities for a good year or so.  Now with the increase in adoption of location-aware technologies thanks to GPS in mobile phones those statuses can  include location data too.

Now, you might think you’ve got nothing to fear – after all, you never publish your home address online!  Think again.  Do you own a domain name?  Are you on the electoral roll?  Are you in the phone book?  All these things things make tracking down your address easy.

I’ve written about The Naked 21st Century before.  We can’t expect privacy as we used to, especially if we participate in online communities and share anything about ourselves.  As fun as location-aware social networking is, in the near future you might need a few accessories to enjoy it fully.  I think that a good burlgar alarm, some lights on timers and making friends with the neighbours might be a good start!