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A website that provides minute by minute updates on people who are not at home has sparked concern that it will encourage burglars. The site, called Please Rob Me, launched this week and has been criticised for being the perfect tool for any self-respecting housebreaker.

But the three brains behind the website insist they’re not helping criminals, but highlighting the dangers of the latest social networking craze of announcing to the world where you are at any given moment via the internet. Social networking crazes such as Foursquare, in which users post their location online, are a goldmine for potential burglars, the website’s founders said. The Please Rob Me website says: ‘Our intention is not, and never has been, to have people burglarized.’

Instead they are trying to alert people to the danger of putting too much information on the world wide web. The Dutch website channels information from other networking sites like Twitter into one place, listing ‘all those empty homes out there’ and providing a running total of ‘new opportunities’. The information it provides on people’s movements is searchable by city or by their Twitter username.

‘We’re leaving the lights on when we’re going on a holiday, but we’re telling everybody on the internet we’re not home,’ said co-founder Frank Groeneveld, 22.

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