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Burglars Browse Facebook Status Updates for Empty Homes

Facebook Burglary Ring We all enjoy updating our Facebook statuses to let all of our friends know about our totally rad social lives. Sometimes, however, these seemingly innocuous updates can only help tech-savvy criminals to choose their targets with greater accuracy -- as one band of burglars in New Hampshire recently proved.

As WMUR Manchester reports, police have now confirmed that a group of burglars in Nashua, New Hampshire have indeed been using the social network to target victims and raid their homes. The criminals reportedly harvested clues from users' status updates, and then used them to determine when a person might be away from home. All in all, the gang is believed to have stolen between $100,000 and $200,000 worth of property, including ammunition, electronics, fireworks and, um, remote-controlled cars.

So far, police have identified three male suspects believed to be involved in the ring, although more could be implicated as the investigation continues. Officials also believe they've already solved 18 individual burglaries, and are currently searching for links to dozens more. Cracked as the case may be, police are still urging people to exercise caution when choosing what to share with the world via the Internet. "Be careful of what you post on these social networking sites," warns 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."


Tags: burglary, crime, facebook, privacy, socialnetworking, Status, status update, StatusUpdate, top

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