Oversharing online: what your posts are telling burglars

Neighbourhood Watch has always taught residents to be alert to physical signs that a house is unoccupied: an overflowing letterbox, curtains that never open, no cars in the driveway. Technology has added a new set of signals, and most people hand them over willingly, without ever thinking of it as a security risk.

A holiday check-in posted the moment you land at the airport tells anyone watching that your home is empty, and often for how long. A geotagged photo can reveal your street, sometimes down to the house number, particularly if a letterbox or nearby landmark is visible. A photo of a new television, laptop or piece of jewellery still in its box signals exactly what's worth taking and, in many cases, roughly where in the house to find it. None of this requires a criminal to be tech-savvy. Public profiles and public posts do the work for them.

The fix is not to stop sharing life online, it is to shift the timing and the audience: 

• Save holiday photos and location tags to post after you are home, rather than in real time.  
• Check privacy settings on social platforms regularly, since many reset default visibility to public after updates, without users noticing.  
• Be selective about who can see location tags and check-ins, and consider whether a broad public audience genuinely needs that information at all. For expensive new purchases, keep the celebration off public feeds, or crop out identifying details like packaging, addresses, or house numbers in the background. 

This is a conversation worth having across generations. Older residents are often more cautious by instinct but less familiar with how location data and metadata work behind the scenes, while younger residents may be highly tech-literate but underestimate how much a public account reveals to strangers. A five-minute privacy settings check, done together, closes a gap that a locked door alone can't.

Checking your digital footprint deserves the same five minutes you'd give to checking your front door lock.