Some small alarms have been raised over the possibility that Twitter and social media like it could be used as information sources for those with nefarious purposes.

Picture this: You’re at Starbucks enjoying a half-and-half grande mocha, or whatever, and you thumb as much into your WiFi-connected PDA, updating Twitter of your current occupation. “At a global coffee chain, working on my novel, just so everybody can see that I’m working on my novel.” Bang. The bad guys know where you are and what you’re doing and rob your house. Or, bang. Your girlfriend’s husband shows up and clobbers you with your own MacBook Air. 

If you’re creative enough, you can think of a thousand scenarios that turn out poorly. Of course this is the fault of Twitter, and not the guy broadcasting his exact whereabouts to all of his followers.

These concerns have been raised, as Mike Masnick notes, on the heels of a bank robbery involving Craigslist. The robber used Craigslist to promise jobs to people and told them to show up outside a bank in a specific uniform. He wore the same thing and robbed the bank, creating a fine sense of confusion. (Hey, maybe penalties for bank robberies should depend on how creative the dude was robbing it. The Craigslist guy gets off light cuz that was pretty brilliant.)

Masnick also mentions how answering machines were once also feared as a broadcast to whomever called that nobody was home. It’s not quite the same because, unless consciously creating a diversion via Twitter, it was obvious pretty quickly that an answering machine was a nice way of lying without saying a word.

Still, in reality, whoever is about to rob you or beat you to a pulp, likely already knows if you’re home or not.