According to an article my husband just emailed me, “a home in Australia was robbed last week by two masked men just a few hours after an image of cash appeared on Facebook. The image showed a large pile of cash and was posted by a 17-year old girl who was helping count her grandmother’s savings.” The image was posted at 4 p.m. and by 11:30 p.m. two masked men arrived wielding a knife and wooden club.
So who’s to blame? Of course it’s the criminals. But really. Why would anyone post a picture of all that cash on their FB account? Once something is out there on the internet, it’s there for the world to see.
Do I have the ability to track where the picture was posted from? Of course not. But criminals obviously do. My husband has tried desperately to explain to me (I’m a luddite when it comes to all this technology) that when you take a picture with your smartphone (something I do not own or use), it also embeds the location of where the picture was taken. A simple program decodes this and voila! you have criminals at your door.
Police told the family that personal information on social networks should be done with “extreme caution.” I’d bet that a lot more than one home has been robbed because people on FB post that they’re going on vacation.
So, would I go jogging at 10 p.m. at night in Central Park? Of course, not. Common sense, folks.
