Are burglars using Facebook to find easy pickings?
Could Facebook or Twitter get you burgled? Insurance companies raising the prospect of higher premiums for social networkers would like you to think so!
Regularly different insurers grumble about social media being a manifesto for burglars to track down suitable targets – much in the same way they said property websites would be a pick and mix for would be burglars.
They could have a point. Plenty of people use social media platforms to keep friends informed of their whereabouts and even the simple geographic searches we use to find mentions of Newbury, Hungerford, Swindon, Oxford and other areas where Morgan PR creates reputations, we often see mentions of holidays, nights out and days away.
Then consider so-called educational website www.pleaserobme.com which merrily feeds details of such movements into a single handy feed. Even The Economist waded in on this debate which caused much frothing at the mouths of the fourth estate.
Keep in mind that such stories represent a clever bit of PR for the insurance business and neatly fuel the fear of crime, which encourages people to insure themselves up to the hilt. However, what is the reality? Surely burglars don’t use Facebook to find properties for their nefarious deeds?
Don’t get me wrong, criminals do use Facebook, but seemingly much like the majority of people using social networking, to chart their lives, which for criminals can be their undoing.
How about the inept housebreaker in Pennsylvania, America who used a victim’s computer to log on during a break – and forgot to log out! This made it pretty straightforward for the police to track him down.
One burglar in East Sussex here in the UK even taunted his victim on her own Facebook account, saying how much he liked his ‘new laptop’ – which was of course hers, complete with login and password to her Facebook account. Police are still hunting him.
They did catch prolific burglar Roy Boodle, who had taunted that he could not be caught via his Facebook account. Well he was jailed for three-and-a-half years. Similar boasts by escaped convict Craig Lynch also ultimately led to his demise, but not before he had amassed over 40,000 followers on Facebook.
The BBC also reported on how 30 Facebook profiles had been deleted after prisoners abused the accounts to taunt their victims, much like any bullies abuse social networking.
Now, admittedly my time as a journalist, not least as a crime reporter, and then as a Thames Valley Police press officer mostly predates social networking. Friends Reunited was sparking plenty of divorces, but no-one was updating the world with their every move.
However, even though Facebook and Twitter are laden with messages that effectively confirm a house is empty, it is far from simple to match such a missive with an actual address. So in reality it still easier for burglars to spot open windows, piles of post, empty driveways and suchlike.
However, together with cancelling the papers and leaving lights on (because burglars don’t know that trick!) and inviting a neighbour to park on your drive, when you do go away there is something else to add to the list to be on the safe side. Don’t update your Facebook status that you are going away!