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Burglary Ring Used Facebook Places To Find Targets

Posted by timothy on from the my-younger-cousins-like-this-and-3-other-pages dept.

Kilrah_il writes "A burglary ring was caught in Nashua, NH due to the vigilance of an off-duty police officer. The group is credited with 50 acts of burglary, the targets chosen because they posted their absence from home on the Internet. '"Be careful of what you post on these social networking sites," said Capt. Ron Dickerson. "We know for a fact that some of these players, some of these criminals, were looking on these sites and identifying their targets through these social networking sites."' Well, I guess the prophecies came true."

11 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. Nothing new by Dyinobal · · Score: 4, Informative

    There was a group or person that was using twitter, to find targets

    1. Re:Nothing new by hex0D · · Score: 3, Informative
      It's no different from people letting their mail / newspapers stack up, leaving conspicuously vacant garages / parking spots, all the house lights off or any number of obvious "I'm not home! Good time to rob me!" signs.

      Headline might as well be 'Bad Things Happen To Those Who Make Dumb Choices'

    2. Re:Nothing new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The problem is, the media jumps on all this stuff like its brand new

      That's usually the case with any form of Darwinism. Hey stupid, don't post your whereabouts and habits on the public Internet unless you want *everybody* to know about them including some very unsavory people. How hard is this to understand? Anybody who doesn't comprehend that doesn't want to. A little cause and effect is just the cure.

      Hey America I hate to break it to you, but being completely oblivious about the potential consequences of your decisions isn't such a great idea. True for everything from this subject on the personal level all the way up to the politics of "if we just give them a little more power they'll keep us safe, honest!"

  2. Not Places by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    They looked for status messages saying people were on vacation. A bit different from using Places.

  3. story summary is horseshit... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...No where in TFA was Facebook Places mentioned, just idiots who announced that they would not be at home. Looks like the submitter has an axe to grind with Places.

  4. Reminds me... by magsol · · Score: 4, Informative

    of this app.

    --
    "I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
  5. Paranoid much? by w0mprat · · Score: 4, Informative

    Facebook places is only for iPhone and phones that support W3 geolocation, and only available via native application or touch.facebook.com. You also actually have to explicitly 'check in' / 'check out' of places.

    It amazes the ammount of paranoid people turning it off believing it tracks their location whereever they log into face book. It's not even available worldwide completely.

    From TFFBFAQ: "At this time, the Places application is available to users in the United States with mobile access to the Facebook application for iPhone or touch.facebook.com"

    Even with places turned off, you only need to post "going to fiji for 6 weeks w00t" and everybody knows you're not home. It amazes me the number of people, especially young females who post "I'm home alone tonight and bored" - you can be sure I'm in contact with the really quickly to tell them how dangerous that is and if I they feel unsafe I could .... wait I'm going off topic...

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  6. Re:Hang on.. by krray · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://youropenbook.org/ is still very much up. Look up "vacation" and be amazed. Found a guy on there the other day letting everyone know he was going to Disney World for the next 11 days. He lived in NH and had a listed phone number...

  7. Re:Always change your privacy settings by lavagolemking · · Score: 2, Informative

    Neither do I, but I hear only the worst things about Facebook's default privacy settings.

  8. A pretty comprehensive writeup... by Americano · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... from the Nashua Telegraph, the local newspaper for Nashua, NH. It's not yet clear how many of the burglaries were related to Facebook status updates - I've seen some news reports saying "all of them," and a few saying "only one."

    I think this case could be a very good lever for getting Facebook to change default permissions to "friends only" for everything, as most of the stories are suggesting that, where there's a facebook connection, the profiles were set to the default "everybody can ready my stuff" setting.

  9. Typical media hype by Spinland · · Score: 4, Informative

    From another source, they didn't use Places at all.

    "We've been in contact with the Nashua police, and they confirmed that they while they have an ongoing investigation and have already made a number of arrests, the only Facebook link was that one of those arrested had a Facebook friend who posted about leaving town in the near future (which is why they believe that home was targeted) and it had nothing to do with Facebook Places," said a Facebook spokesman in an email interview with Cnet's Caroline McCarthy.

    --
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