According to Confused using social websites such as Twitter or Facebook can increase your risk of being robbed. It is even being said that using Facebook or Twitter may soon increase your home owners insurance. At first glance this seems pretty scary and is something that most people likely never considered.

Robbers want to rob a house when they will have the greatest chance of not getting caught. That means they do not want anyone to be home. These articles point out that when you post your ware abouts online, you are informing robbers. They could use the information that you are not home to go to your house and rob it. The first assumption is that your address is freely available. After doing a quick check of my computer illiterate friends on Facebook, I didn’t find any with that information available. However, the robber could use your name and a phone book to look you up.

The other problem is robbers already have tons of ways to find people that are not home. Simply picking up a phone book and calling numbers in order and going to the houses that do not pick up. In fact the robber could get lucky and they home owner would have put a message on their voice mail saying they will be out of town. Robbers also know that nearly everyone works during the day. So they can simply go up to a house during the day and knock to see if someone answers the door.

If we look at someone who can guarantee is not home during a certain time, such as a news anchor who is live on air at a certain time each day. We do not see an increase in the likelihood of robber for news anchors versus the average person.

I’m not saying its perfectly fine to post your ware abouts online. I just want to point out that it is very doubtful it increases your likelihood of being robbed. I hope the smart people at the insurance companies actually look at some data and not just jump on the chance to charge more money.