Google helps you rob people (if you're into that sort of thing)

I found this old-school picture of Jodie Foster online today. Apparently, people used to stalk her.

Last Thursday, police in Lakeville, Minn., were conducting a public service campaign to remind residents to secure their homes to prevent theft when they came across an unlocked house at 3 a.m.

The police found the garage door open, the TV on, the keys to his truck in the ignition and the door was ajar.

Police woke the owner of the house up because his two sons were afraid to do it. According to the AP story, the house owner, Troy Molde, "feels violated" by the police's actions.

Perhaps he shouldn't feel violated by the police as much as he should violated by the media/Google for printing his name, city, the fact he leaves his keys in his truck and his door unlocked and is apparently a strong sleeper.

Using the information from the story, you can spend all of a half of second typing the information into Google and find out he lives at 17925 Fulda Tri, Lakeville, Mn 55044.

If you want to find out if he's home or not before you rob his place, call him at 952-431-2183. If you need driving directions, all you have to do is click on the map hyperlink and enter your own address in and you'll get step-by-step directions to his house.

You can get the same results for any name you type in that can be found in the phone book. It's pretty crazy.

Back in the day, you used to have to buy a hat, a trench coat and a pair of sunglasses (or, at the very least, this shirt) then hide in a car, a dark ally or around the corner smoking cigarettes to stalk someone.

Nowadays, you don't even have to leave your house or put pants on. Everyone's just a click away. (But so is help.)

Web sites like Google, facebook, myspace and friendster and a score of others make it super easy to track your friends or people you wish were your friends and for the same people to track you (in fact, the average college student will spend more time on facebook than in class for their minor).

If you enjoy being stalked and these Web sties aren't enough for you, there's another Web site called plazes.com that lets you create an account so others can know your whereabouts 24 hours a day. Through, if you decide this is for you, be sure to turn it off before you lie to your wife about where you are. The site's inventor kinda forgot...