Police in New Hampshire recently caught their first three suspects in a string of robberies that has yielded up to $200,000 in recovered property.
Fifty homes were robbed last month in one city, and police say “the suspects used social networking sites such as Facebook to identify victims who posted online that they would not be home at a certain time.”
Users of Places, Foursquare, et al, is announcing you’re on vacation a dumb idea, or is this just how we’re rolling now?
Source: WMUR
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Copy & paste this:
how come i havn’t been caught yet?
Lol picture win.
Because you were smart enough to avoid bragging about it in your status updates.
(I have no doubt in my mind that this is how the robbers got caught.)
I’m waiting for South Korea to do so.
It’s awesome that your avatar snowflake actually has his glasses.
North Korea bettar.
the best part about facebook is not having an account.
Yes indeed!
¨WIN
Wow, people who do that DESERVE to be robbed!
I don’t even get WHY people post everywhere they’re going. I rarely do anything that even deserves a status update. Then again, I have other friends that post statuses every time they eat something. I don’t understand it -_-
Oh and also, they posted they wouldn’t be home at a certain time? Like, “I won’t be home from 2:30 to 6pm exactly, and if anyone needs to get into my house to stop the cat from eating my furniture, the back kitchen window will be unlocked”
I’ve seen people post the time of their kid’s recital, or their shifts for the next workday, or maybe you just notice that every Sunday around 1:00 they post that they’ve come home from church. If you choose you targets right, you could have a distinct 3-10 hour window. Still, seems like a bad idea for the robbers; how do you know they don’t have a spouse or a dog?
Or a roommate.
At the very least, they know that they won’t have a brain.
Silly buggers! Anyway, enough of this – early flight tomorrow morning! Must remember to hide the doorkey under the welcome mat. See you in three weeks…
Hopy you made your address publicly available too, so your fb friends can take turns in watching your house for you
I guess that would make it FaceCrook. The burglars social site. LOL
you are my kind of people Justice =)
Why do people not make their profile secure so only friends see it? And why on earth would you add people you do not know.
Advertising your exact movements? Stupid f**kwomble. You DESERVE it!
With Facebook, there is no such thing as “secure”.
Because too many people are narcissists. And now, in addition to Facebook and Twitter, they have “places” that interfaces with both, so people can track everywhere they go and see exactly where they are. Now, burglars can estimate down to the minute how much time they have to steal from someone before they arrive back home.
Some people are a wee bit… self-absorbed, shall we say. And some people don’t realize the danger in not checking their security settings and then saying things like, “Going to my parents’ house for the weekend, be back Monday!!”
I have hundred of people I do not know on my Facebook game account. Then again I don’t have any personal information on it, not even my real name.
This smacks of urban legend. The robbers would have to troll FB to find out who is posting that they are not home, then know where they live, and know no one else is home, know if there are security alarms, and then actually rob the place. FB is not a secure place, but it is not laid out with a street directory and alarm codes.
Yes, but consider the intelligence level of people who post that their home will be vacant for a length of time. They probably have no security features enabled (on their home or FB) and regularly post enough information that even the dumbest crook could rob them. I can totally believe this happens. A lot.
I wouldn’t say ‘a lot’, but I would bet that it has happened before.
This is one of the reasons I have my my account on the securest of settings. Now if only I could find a way to get off of the ‘friend finder’ thing.
Except they link to an actual news story…?
http://www.wmur.com/r/24943582/detail.html
I live in NH. WMUR is legit. This ACTUALLY happened.
Congrats on being a skeptical little elitist, though!
Some people are low enough to steal from “friends”. People whose homes they have partied at…but people who they don’t actually care about.
50 homes in a month might seem like a stretch, but it does say “the first three suspects”, so it could be 10 people with 5 “friends” each, or something.
What gets me is the people who blame facebook for all of this stuff, rather than the stupidity of people who post private information on a public website.
I’m confused. These people actually have friends that rob them? Or are they stupid enough to not secure their profile?
Some people will friend anyone, no matter how tenuous the connection, because they want as many Facebook friends as possible.
that or they could be the type that has a million bajillion friends just for Farmville so they add people they don’t know that hear every little detail. Just another reason why I hate those apps that make you add people in order to advance…
Some games let you “unfriend” the person after you’ve connected. But Farmville requires you maintain the friend status in order to succeed. I’m pretty sure a friend of mine only know about 30 of her 300+ friends well enough to really comfortably be “friends” with them!
How about hiding your address on FB for starters?
This would be an awesome way to catch them though. Tell the world you’re headed out, then wait for the fun to begin. Castle doctrine exists for a reason lol.
I’m wondering how they find the addresses, unless these victims are dumb enough to put it on their accounts. I can’t see where though. It takes a special kind of stupid to list the address AND make it public that the home will be vacant.
You’re not great with the research, are you?
The addresses didn’t have to come from FB, you know.
You’re not great with people skills, are you? Rude much?
Wow, I’m glad I live in Nashua…
If someone wants to target a home while someone’s not there, I doubt it’s difficult regardless of social networking. People have jobs away from home. A lot of families have both parents working. Add to that, kids in school, and voila, empty house.
Seriously? The only things I can think of that would make that possible
A ) You list your address on FB
B ) You make it public [even though that isn't a big thing anymore]
C ) You then use Places or even status updates to announce that you’re thousands of miles from home
Failing this, FB does have “groups” based on the city, state where you live to “make it easier to search for your friends when you type names into the search field” and the burglars just went through it and started adding everyone in that particular part of New Hampshire.
It might also be possible that the burglars posed as some kind of investors to whom FB would have gladly sold their user info.
Now, personally I think people are trying to use this in their crusade against Places. However, it would be just as easy (maybe even easier to see) “Blah Blah is in the Caribbean” or something as a basic status update. It seems to further the idea that people are completely oblivious to how public things like FB really are. They assume that no one else is going to see their status updates or personal info and what not. People pour out their hearts and souls in their blogs, all this info right there for the entire world to see if they know where to look. I’m not one for psychiatry, but I think we should get some in depth studies probing what people are thinking when they post personal information or soul-baring status updates on social networking sites.
You really don’t need A-C. IF your name is not John Smith or something similar, even the basic info on Facebook that is public (name, area where you live) can easily give someone your address. Then, a status saying ‘THailand is amaaazinnggg’ is all you need. BUrglars can use Google maps to check what kind of house you live in, without even going outside.
Now, I am not one of those paranoia type people, but just google yourself and see how much stuff you can find. If you don’t want people to know something, don’t put it online. Not on FB, not on your company website, school sit or anywhere. SImple as that.
I did Google myself i got 0 about me, stop being paranoid
Netru some people have a ton of information about themselves online. You and I are lucky, in that we can hide in anonymity one way or another. For me, there are enough people with the same name that anything relating to me starts on the second page of searches, and even then anything directly relating to me doesn’t start until the bottom of that page, and even then you have to know things about me that aren’t public on my facebook
If you don’t add random people you’re only in danger of being robbed by your friends when you post status updates saying you’re out of town.
If you set your privacy settings correctly nobody but your friends sees your status updates.
You mean psychology, not psychiatry. And there’s nothing mysterious about it; people just assume that their information is safe when it’s really not. They’re just NOT thinking.
I find it hilarious that many of my friends tell me I’m stupid for making my profile completely unsearchable to anyone outside my networks and not viewable to anyone who I’m not friends with. They also say I’m making myself look stupid and uncool by deleting people I haven’t spoken to in years.
They’re also the ones who post updates on where they’ll be and use places & foursquare XD I think they have it a little backwards
maybe if idiots would only let their friends see their wall and not add people to their friends that they don’t know, this kind of thing wouldn’t happen.
Heck, not only would i announce my vacation to FB, but I’ll post it on my farm fence…but then again, to enter my farm, they have to walk by a friendly warning sign that states, “Trespassers Will Be Eaten”……
Wouldnt these burglars have to be friends with these people in order to read the status updates and then be able to rob them? How did they end up with friends like that???
Not if the person has their settings set to where anyone can see their wall.
But, as long as you’re smart enough to set your privacy settings correctly, you’re right that the burglar would have to be friends to see it.
Don’t forget that pesky “friends of friends” option that a lot of people have open but forget about.
There was a news story a month or two ago about a women robbed by a FB “friend.” The woman posted a status update that she was going to a concert that night with her boyfriend. Her friends list included a guy she had gone to grade school with, but had not spoken to in years. He saw that she was going to the concert, called to find out when it started, and shortly after that time, showed up at her house and robbed her. Apparently she had recently installed a video camera surveillance system, and so he was identified. All he would have had to do was look up her address in a phone book.
So yes, it is important to be careful about who you add, and who can see your posts. The default “privacy” on Facebook is no privacy. You have to tighten it up yourself.
Wouldn’t you also have to post your address in order for this to be a problem? I mean, you could post your exact schedule, and if creepers don’t know where you live, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.
But, some people are probably stupid enough to post their addresses, phone numbers, and home-security codes. *sigh*
I think this is fake…. how would the police know the thieves used facebook to target people, unless every single one of them was caught and confessed.
“Police in New Hampshire recently caught their first three suspects in a string of robberies ”
Learn to read?
Or they don’t know what a friend actually is.
An acquaintance will help you move. A friend will help you move a body.
How many Frenemies do you have?
One more reason I’m really picky about who I let onto my facebook.
…That last sentence really had nothing to do with anything?