Be careful with social media, and everything else!

[Elchikaah Haly]

Recently, in our big family, some burglars succeeded to enter in one of my aunts house, during the DAY TIME, exposed at 100%, and stole about 20 000$ worth cash and about 200 000$ worth jewelry. No one knew how they did it as they were never found.

Also, about a week later, another of my aunts, who's gone traveling to Asia with her kids and husband, also got their home victims of burglar, but they were lucky enough to have a central alarm, unlike my previous aunt. When the alarm rang off, the burglars fled the scene.

Seeing that's been happening twice within the big family within one week, my take is that the burglars are people we might know, whenever distantly or not. One theory I have with this is that they keep posting too much of their daily actions in social medias (in this instance, Facebook), like saying that they are gone to vacation all the time and such. Seeing this, the burglar(s) get the idea to steal stuff at their home while no one's there.

I also heard that kind of thievery happens from times to times because of those social media posts. I never thought it'd would happen within our family.

So the moral of this story is... don't post too much of your life on Facebook

[nocturnal YL]

Sounds reasonable to me. Often criminals and their victims know each other prior to the crime, and giving out information means a much larger potential attack surface.

[Elchikaah Haly]

Indeed! And I just learned that another of my aunts almost got victim as well recently while she was out to get her daughter, though she managed to make them flee since she had to come back home as she forgot something. She saw two men and called the police.

I dunno if these two men are the same as the others, but still... I think people are targeting my family.

[starlightmeteor]

Aug 8, 2014 17:10:31 GMT Elchikaah Haly said:

Indeed! And I just learned that another of my aunts almost got victim as well recently while she was out to get her daughter, though she managed to make them flee since she had to come back home as she forgot something. She saw two men and called the police.

I dunno if these two men are the same as the others, but still... I think people are targeting my family.

Yikes!~ I hope your family members are safe now.  This world is such a crazy place @_@...    

[Elchikaah Haly]

Well actually another of my family member got their house robbed yesterday while he went to work. It seems it won't end

But apparently it might not just be our family, as one of my cousins has a coworker who got robbed as well. It might be a phenomenon in the area. But it's weird it's happening in the metropolis area as well where there are literally millions of people living there.

[felix]

This is awful and I'm kinda upset to hear this from you... could it be that they really followed your parents' actions and organised rhemselves accordingly? I don't knok if social medias are the true issue in this matter, but we can't exclude that either... my bet is that the thief must have known your aunt and her habits and as a consequence he took advantage of the situation. Anyway I'm really sorry to read this, I know how it feels to be robbed by burglars in home and that's not a very pleasant burden to carry on after you see your possession and important belongings stolen away =\

[Elchikaah Haly]

Felix: It had happened to you too? That must have been devastating! I hope not too much has been taken

Well the fact that the people who got robbed so far are people who post quite a lot of their status over Facebook. That is why I blame the social medias (well at least their users).

It makes me glad that my direct family (my parents and brother) are pretty secretive about our status over the Internet (though the reasons my parents are secretive is because they are Internet newbies lol).

[Dioji]

I have heard that could be the case. I never understood the whole posting your entire life on Facebook or twitter but it certainly doesn't seem to help when the world knows you're not home.

I'm sorry that whoever got your aunts weren't found though. It stinks when someone invades your life like that and even worse that there's no closure about it.

[Dubbie]

That's awful to hear, Elchi. Your relatives are safe from harm which is good. Have they countered on how to deal with the burglars?

[felix]

Elchi: No fortunately, but well we were lucky enough that my mom woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and then she heard the noises of the burglars running away....otherwise they would have continued to rob. We were stupid because we forgot a window open and so they entered.... Oh well ^^"

On a related note, I wouldn't be surprised if via social media this kind of horrible stuff happens: just going to one single random FB account you get all the information of that person you need by looking at their profile info section... even your house location. And it doesn't sound quite right to me when FB asks my cell number to protect and secure my account from intruders... what's the benefit in this and above all, why would I feel safer if I give my number to the hugest and richest social media company in the world which is possibly controlling your private conversations and habits? Well, I know this sounds quite scary and I may have exaggerated but I wouldn't exclude this supposition.

[starlightmeteor]

Sept 23, 2014 12:30:53 GMT felix said:

Elchi: No fortunately, but well we were lucky enough that my mom woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and then she heard the noises of the burglars running away....otherwise they would have continued to rob. We were stupid because we forgot a window open and so they entered.... Oh well ^^"

On a related note, I wouldn't be surprised if via social media this kind of horrible stuff happens: just going to one single random FB account you get all the information of that person you need by looking at their profile info section... even your house location. And it doesn't sound quite right to me when FB asks my cell number to protect and secure my account from intruders... what's the benefit in this and above all, why would I feel safer if I give my number to the hugest and richest social media company in the world which is possibly controlling your private conversations and habits? Well, I know this sounds quite scary and I may have exaggerated but I wouldn't exclude this supposition.

I am sorry to heard that Felix.  At the very least your family is safe, and the burgulars didn't stay longer than they did. 

 Hmm...I see where you are coming from.  Gmail asks me to give them my mobile number, and I tend to ignore the requests =p  I guess if you make sure that when you do give your personal information to websites that they do have a legitimate reason to ask you for the information and try to keep tabs on any piece of I.Ds you have..I know I'll have to when I move out in a week. =p