Burglars Love Social Media

I heard an interesting news story the other day: a research study found that 78-percent of burglars use social media to determine which houses to rob. I’m not quite sure how someone does a research study of burglars. I suppose you either could conduct prison interviews, in which case you’d be getting data from the less talented segment of that profession, the ones who got caught. Or maybe the researchers simply attended the monthly meetings of the Royal Order of Burglarizing Rogues (R.O.B.R., for short), which meets every fourth Tuesday at Applebee’s (where the manager wonders why the silverware keeps disappearing).

Well, whatever the exact percentage, I have no doubt many burglars use Internet-based social media to target their victims, because many people routinely use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to make the following announcement: “Attention please! My house will be empty for the next seven days, so feel free to steal my new flat-screen TV. Oh, and my jewelry is in the master bedroom dresser, top drawer on the right.”

OK, maybe people don’t phrase their social media comments quite like that, but they don’t have to. The exact same message is communicated when they, for example, post a selfie photo on Facebook with this note: “Just landed in Miami. Gonna sit by the pool for a full week. Try to stay warm in freezing Connecticut!”

Why do people announce to the whole world that their homes are empty? The answer is simple: people are as dumb as rocks. No wait, that’s not it. You can’t acquire a nice home with a lot of nice stuff worth stealing, and the money to vacation in Miami, if you’re dumb. The problem is, when a social media website like Facebook uses the term “friend,” many people actually assume it means “friend,” and they think to themselves, “I’m only sharing this poolside photo with my friends, and of course, my friends would never rob my house.”

But in Facebook parlance, the term “friend” actually means: “a random stranger who used to work with a person who was once a neighbor of a person who went to college with a person who I vaguely remember from high school.” The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon has nothing on the Five Degrees of Facebook Friending. (Sorry if that reference is too obscure. Google it.) In other words, when you post something on Facebook that you think only three or four of your closest friends will see, you might as well plaster the message on billboards along the side of every Interstate highway in America. I suspect your Facebook posting is one of the PowerPoint slides during the monthly R.O.B.R. meetings.

So, what is the solution to this problem? Well, people can wait until they return from their vacation before posting photos online. But that’s unlikely in our instant gratification, impulsive culture because it eliminates the “nyah nyah effect.” (This is the true sentiment behind the poolside photo posting, which is, “Nyah nyah! I’m sitting under a palm tree while you’re shoveling snow! Nyah nyah!”)

The better solution is to add a couple of extra comments along with the poolside photo, such as: “I’m glad my cousin Max is house-sitting for us while we’re away. He’s the guy with the extensive gun collection and anger management issues.” Or: “We weren’t sure we could afford to vacation in Miami this year after all the money we spent on the high-tech home security system, which includes surveillance cameras, electrified fences, and tripwires that set off claymore mines.”

If you still insist on telling the world you’re on vacation, and you end up getting robbed, all I can say is, “Nyah nyah!”