Life for robbers could be made a little bit easier thanks to Dutch website PleaseRobMe which reveals the location of empty homes, but would-be victims would only have themselves to blame, as the information used to find empty homes is posted online by the potential victims themselves.
The site, developed by Boy Van Amstel, Frank Groeneveld and Barry Borsboom, took just four hours to create according to the BBC, and uses data posted to Twitter by players of online game Foursquare, which is based upon a player"s real world location, to tell users whether the person is at home or not.
"It started with me and a friend looking at our Twitter feeds and seeing more and more Foursquare posts," said Van Amstel.
"People were checking in at their house, or their girlfriend"s or friend"s house, and sharing the address - I don"t think they were aware of how much they were sharing."
Van Amstel explained that the site is nothing more than a Twitter search, emphasising that anyone with knowledge of HTML and Javascript could do it. Although the site will remain live, he went on to state it was not intended to help criminals.
"The website is not a tool for burglary. The point we"re getting at is that not long ago it was questionable to share your full name on the internet. We"ve gone past that point by 1,000 miles."
He added that it would actually be "very difficult" to carry out a burglary using the information on the website.