Originally Posted by
contango
One or two specific stories might be debunked but it's still a pretty dumb idea to post enough information online that people might figure out your home address and then describe in great detail the 4-week tour you're planning. Some time back the BBC reported a new site some wag had started that picked up on people who left enough identifying information on sites like Facebook and Twitter and then posted helpful hints like "At the airport now, waiting for the flights, two weeks in the sun here I come!" from a mobile device.
Discussing the merits or otherwise of specific rest stops and specific routes is a great thing, especially from the perspective of providing information for people who are considering a similar route.
ETA: I personally wouldn't put detailed tour plans online. An outline perhaps, and writing about it after the event via a blog or similar could be interesting for people who are following the journey with the right kind of interest. Too much information about where you're going to be and when in the future tense could be a gift for people with the wrong kind of interest - it's effectively an advert that an individual, travelling alone, is likely to be arriving in a particular area one evening, probably very tired from a day's cycling, and will have a bike and all sorts of other stuff with them that could be readily taken. If you're planning on staying overnight with someone then they need to know details like what day and what time, but it's hard to see how anyone else needs advance plans in any detail.
I tend to think that the dangers of that are extremely minimal.
First the part about not being home... There are much easier ways to know when a house will be empty. For one thing it would be a bad assumption that if someone is on tour that no one else is home at their residence. Many of us do not live alone so the only thing a would be thief knows is that one person from the household is away. I bet that more than half of bike tourist's homes are not empty when they are on tour. There are still likely to be spouses, housemates, parents, siblings, and offspring there. It would be much easier for the would be thief to just monitor the comings and goings in a neighborhood than to try to find someone who isn't home by reading journals.
As far as folks knowing where I am on tour and seeking me out... That seems like a huge stretch to me. Having a bike, some dirty clothes, and used camping gear is unlikely to make someone seek me out. If the goal is theft bike tourists would seem to be a pretty poor target. They might be a target for grabbing their bike or gear outside the library in a larger town, but seeking them out because of their journal... Not likely.
If the fear is that some crazed stalker will find me... Then I figure that I am better off worrying about more likely dangers like cars and trucks.