Everything Facebook - Pros, Cons, Changes, Advice, Help Needed...It's All Here, Folks

[PrincessLeppard]

Are robbers really trolling facebook for people to rob? I'm skeptical.

 

[PDilemma]

Are robbers really trolling facebook for people to rob? I'm skeptical.

Yeah, I am, too.

And this airline thing is completely voluntary. If the idea freaks you out, don't participate.

 

[Jenny]

I just think it's foolish, if nothing else. Why would anyone publish that they are going away? Why not just invite robbers to come to your house !

Are robbers really trolling facebook for people to rob? I'm skeptical.

Yeah, I am, too.

And this airline thing is completely voluntary. If the idea freaks you out, don't participate.

Go back a few pages on this thread - we already discussed the issue of "I'll get robbed."

In the case of the KLM program, you're only going to be vulnerable if you profile includes "and my whole family is coming with me, so no one will be in the house, and here's my address."

So let's think this through. The person that sees that information is also travelling (and has let people know that too), so they'd have to pass on the info to someone else. That person would then have to figure out the home address of the first person - sometimes that's easy if the name is unusual or they are from a small town, but usually it's not. Then, once you find the house, assuming you know how long the resident will be away, you take the chance that there might be someone else living there, or staying at the house to look after it, or neighbours might be also watching it. There could easily be an alarm system, and who's to say the house has anything worth stealing?

As someone said upthread, there are far easier ways to identify targets for theft than Facebook.

 

[rjblue]

Our newspaper used to publish a social column of who was visiting and who was travelling. No one seemed to worry about the potential uses of this information, and property crimes rates were not much different than they are now.

 

[BigB08822]

The new timeline feature on facebook is awful. I hate it. I hope the home page never ever looks like that. It makes me never want to visit other people's pages.

 

[cruisin]

As someone said upthread, there are far easier ways to identify targets for theft than Facebook.

I still don't think it's a good idea to publish dates that you will be away. It is too easy for the wrong people to get that information. You don't know who may be reading these pages. For that matter, I don't think it's a good idea to post dates that you will be away on any message boards either.

 

[quebecoise]

The new timeline feature on facebook is awful. I hate it. I hope the home page never ever looks like that. It makes me never want to visit other people's pages.

I agree. I totally dislike it! We were supposed to all get them these days but it doesn't look they are ready for it(and I'm happy because I don't want to get it!)

I went to some friend's page who have it and I completely dislike it. The organization of things is really bad.

I hope they will get us the choice to add it or not. I don't have it yet(and I don't want to). The new date release was today but I still have the last version.

 

[PeterG]

So let's think this through. The person that sees that information is also travelling (and has let people know that too), so they'd have to pass on the info to someone else. That person would then have to figure out the home address of the first person - sometimes that's easy if the name is unusual or they are from a small town, but usually it's not. Then, once you find the house, assuming you know how long the resident will be away, you take the chance that there might be someone else living there, or staying at the house to look after it, or neighbours might be also watching it. There could easily be an alarm system, and who's to say the house has anything worth stealing?

As someone said upthread, there are far easier ways to identify targets for theft than Facebook.

 

[genevieve]

I think it makes Facebook look more like a MySpace page. I never belonged to MySpace, because I HATED the look of it. The FB timeline version is a lot cleaner but it's still looks cluttered. I only have one friend using it - or at least only one friend whose page i've visited recently, but I admit since the last redesign I almost never go to peoples' pages or scroll down to see posts. I post things and read any replies I might get, and I play Garden of Time. Might respond to someone else's post if it's on the top of my list when I log in.

 

[PDilemma]

I'm going to the grocery store in case anyone wants to rob my house. You'll need to figure out what town I'm in, get here, find my address and hope that the neighbors in our four-plex don't notice you. At least two of them are home and the landlady next door knows not only us, but the other people allowed to have keys. You have about 20 minutes.

Good luck.

Seriously, old-fashioned casing of a house is going to be a much more efficient way of robbing people than finding info online on FB or a forum.

 

[Sparks]

PD - do you have any new electronic toys I might be interested in?

 

[genevieve]

I would suggest going for the engagement ring, but apparently PD is one of those weirdoes that wears hers everywhere!

 

[Sparks]

I don't want no stinkin ring...I want an IPad or something similar.

 

[cruisin]

I'm going to the grocery store in case anyone wants to rob my house. You'll need to figure out what town I'm in, get here, find my address and hope that the neighbors in our four-plex don't notice you. At least two of them are home and the landlady next door knows not only us, but the other people allowed to have keys. You have about 20 minutes.

Good luck.

Seriously, old-fashioned casing of a house is going to be a much more efficient way of robbing people than finding info online on FB or a forum.

Make fun, but there is a lot of information on many people's FB pages. Often the town they live in. With a first and last name and a town, it would not be that difficult to find an address.

 

[PDilemma]

I'm back now, you're all too late. I have a 4.5 yr old Macbook. No iPad. No new electronics. Sorry. And even if I weren't wearing it, it is not an elaborate ring; you wouldn't get much out of it. No cash around here, either. You could take some of the tractors, though. It would not break my heart. But they aren't mine.

Quite frankly, if you want to rob people in my town, I'd go for the wealthy neighborhood overlooking the river, or head north on the highway and hit up the swanky houses around the fake lake. My neighborhood isn't so promising!

cruisin', I realize that. But someone else suggested that mentioning leaving home on a forum is risky. Not so much. Only a few people here may know what town I live in. And they might not even know how to get here. And one person maybe knows my name. Maybe.

As for the info on FB, if you post that info, and you aren't careful with privacy settings...it may be a small risk. But you don't have to post it and you can control who sees your information. And it is still a small risk. Conventional theft is going to be a much greater risk all the time and factors like the neighborhood you live in and the precautions you take are going to be much larger. When we are away overnight, we tell our land lady who lives on the other side of the wall. She tells us when she is--we typically feed each other's pets and take in each other's mail. Those precautions and other things far outweigh the risk of anyone on FB knowing if we left the house.

And it all amuses me anyway. I grew up for ten years in a town where if you left in the car, at least five people would ask where you went at work or school the next day. There are no "privacy settings" for those towns and they still exist.

 

[rjblue]

Make fun, but there is a lot of information on many people's FB pages. Often the town they live in. With a first and last name and a town, it would not be that difficult to find an address.

If you know someone's name, there are about a dozen web services that will give you their address with more ease than using Facebook. And someone's occupation is probably a better indication of their degree of wealth, so I'd use Linkedin, if I were going to start my career as a burgler.

 

[PeterG]

Any other info about how to rob people through the world wide web? My new career plans are coming along nicely!

 

[cruisin]

^^ Yeah, because people who rob houses had never thought to use the internet as a resource. Not all robberies are impulse, some are planned. You'd all be surprised at how easy it is to find out information, if you have motivation.

 

[genevieve]

^^ Yeah, because people who rob houses had never thought to use the internet as a resource. Not all robberies are impulse, some are planned. You'd all be surprised at how easy it is to find out information, if you have motivation.

I think the point is that there are much easier ways to plan a home theft through the internet than by using Facebook.

 

[cruisin]

I think the point is that there are much easier ways to plan a home theft through the internet than by using Facebook.

I understand that. I I am not saying that there aren't many ways to plan a robbery. I'm simply suggesting that publishing the dates and times of your trip, might not be a good idea. We really have no way of knowing who reads these posts. I don't know how secure the airline's "sit next to" site is. It is also rather odd that they are doing this now. Weren't plane manifests always considered confidential?

 

[PDilemma]

I understand that. I I am not saying that there aren't many ways to plan a robbery. I'm simply suggesting that publishing the dates and times of your trip, might not be a good idea. We really have no way of knowing who reads these posts. I don't know how secure the airline's "sit next to" site is. It is also rather odd that they are doing this now. Weren't plane manifests always considered confidential?

Passengers have to opt in to this; it is not automatic.

 

[numbers123]

about the only person I think has left enough information to have a robbery planned from facebook is a friend of mine who goes to the park every single morning with her dogs at the same time of the day and posts it.

_____ is at ______ park with carly and trevor. But I think that it would be much easier to case the neighborhood and find that out. Or be one of the renovators that she has had working at her house for the last month.

 

[PeterG]

Does this happen to anyone else? You're reading the posts on your wall, you screen down a few sections and...BLIP! You're back at the top of the page. So you scroll down, go a few more sections and then again, you're back at the top of the page!

Makes reading your wall take longer than is necessary. (And it's irritating!!)

 

[triple_toe]

Thoughts on the timeline

 

[A.H.Black]

Does this happen to anyone else? You're reading the posts on your wall, you screen down a few sections and...BLIP! You're back at the top of the page. So you scroll down, go a few more sections and then again, you're back at the top of the page!

Makes reading your wall take longer than is necessary. (And it's irritating!!)

Does it happen on any other pages? My Mac does that to me on firefox occasionally. For me it's not the site, it's my browser.

 

[my little pony]

Any other info about how to rob people through the world wide web? My new career plans are coming along nicely!

i wait until those 4 square people sign in someplace then sprint over to their homes and burgle

 

[genevieve]

Does this happen to anyone else? You're reading the posts on your wall, you screen down a few sections and...BLIP! You're back at the top of the page. So you scroll down, go a few more sections and then again, you're back at the top of the page!

Makes reading your wall take longer than is necessary. (And it's irritating!!)

yes - a version of this happens to me on FB (and only FB) all the time - only for me I end up skipping way farther down the feed. Very annoying. Another reason I rarely read my newsfeed anymore. If it's not visible when I log in, I generally don't see it.

 

[MacMadame]

We've had the robbery discussion before. There have been cases where people have posted they were not at home and teenage friends of their kids came over and trashed the place or robbed it.

So whether or not we think robbers have better and easier ways to find victims, some of them use Facebook. Not all thieves are smart, I guess.

ETA and, yeah, that jumping thing happens to me too. It jumps when the page gets updated with new stories on top. But I don't want to read them when I am 5 "older stories" clicks down and then have to reload all those stories again to get back where I started!

 

[Jenny]

I'm starting to see a few pages in the new timeline layout - does anyone know if this will be an option, or if it's eventually going to be rolled out to everyone?

 

[PrincessLeppard]

I usually do the "year in status" thing, but when I went to use it this year, it requested permission to post things to my page. So I didn't do it.

Has anyone tried this? Did it post stuff? I just like to look at my stupid statuses all together.