Stephen Hawkings thought it was a bad idea to let aliens know Earth’s location, in case they were hostile.
We sure as hell don’t need “Independence Day” to happen for real.
The location was based on Earth’s relative position in relation to the handful of then known pulsars. Fast forward to today and we now know that just about every neutron star starts out as a pulsar (to somebody, not just Earth) so there are millions of pulsars in our galaxy alone.
Scientists have admitted that the directions on the probes probably wouldn’t help any alien that might discover the probe.