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Show HN: Please Don't Rob Me

123 points| noppe | 11 years ago |pleasedontrobme.com | reply

113 comments

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[+] nl|11 years ago|reply
It always surprises me people think this is a real issue. For many "victims" a more effective algorithm would be something like this:

   If victim's age > 25 && < 60
      If hour of day > 10 and < 17
         Rob house
That algorithm will fail in many cases of course, but I'd argue it covers a much larger number of people than the supposed problem identified here.

For added safety, the implementor may add this feature prior to the "Rob house" step:

   Knock on front door
[+] jwblackwell|11 years ago|reply
Yep, the premise of this is pretty ridiculous. Out of 80k they only identified 2700 homes. How many of those are actually within a reachable distance and how can you be sure those people also live alone. I'd bet a large percentage of users posting on Instagram probably also live with their parents and therefore there's a chance the house won't be empty.

So what are you left with? A few hundred? That's assuming the average burglar would even bother to do any of this as opposed to just staking out a house for a few hours with poor security.

[+] captainmuon|11 years ago|reply
An old trick I've heard is to have someone call the house's landline while you are robbing it. As long as the phone is ringing, you can be reasonably sure that no one is home.
[+] markbnj|11 years ago|reply
Agree that it's silly. At best it gives you positive data about places where people are. It says nothing about the state of the places where they are not, except that they are not in those places. Just because one of those places happens to be the one they live in doesn't make it fit for a quick burglary.
[+] VLM|11 years ago|reply
Locally we had a huge problem with door to door salesmen who would case the place out. They walk around suburban residential neighborhoods at noon on a weekday when probably half the houses are empty, maybe with a ladder as a prop, hard hats, clipboards, etc. If no one answers the door 3 times at 1:30pm on a Tuesday, then on the fourth time they pull up in a truck, break the back door, clean the place out, drive to the next house, etc.

They also went around on trash day recording on their map who was throwing out giant cardboard boxes formerly containing large screen TVs, but those are now getting so cheap and so uncomfortably large that they're not so much of a target anymore. My 42 inch would have sold for several thousand maybe a decade ago, but now its just a couple hundred bucks, why even bother, compared to grabbing some laptops or jewelry.

[+] dm2|11 years ago|reply
I use to work on a system that monitored when customers were going to be away on vacation.

If you also had data on whether or not they had an alarm system then that could be a very dangerous combination.

I would never rob anyone though, risk too high, reward too low, and I'd feel bad.

Plus, where I live most people own a gun, it would not be wise to break down my door. Yes, I put a gun in the bathroom when I shower and poop.

One of my biggest fears is being asleep and having sleep paralysis and not being able to defend myself at night. Although I'm not sure if I'm just dreaming that I have sleep paralysis or not, I strongly suspect I am but it's hard to test.

[+] cail|11 years ago|reply
I agree, this would most likely only pose much of a thread to people like celebrities, where the potential gain is very high.

For the average person it's much more likely that the burglar is just using opportunity. For example they saw you leave shortly before 9:00 or your house just happens to look empty during the day.

That's by no means to say that this project is a bad idea. I think anything that attempts to teach people to be more careful about the information they put out there in public online is absolutely a good idea as this kind of information could be used for purposes other than burglary.

[+] eurleif|11 years ago|reply
Presumably it's easier to rob a house at night. If someone is away, you can do that.
[+] reuven|11 years ago|reply
It's an interesting idea, tracking people's current locations based on their sharing on social networks, and cross-referencing other databases to find out if someone is at home.

But this seems like a very high-threshold way to find out whether someone is home. I mean, if I'm really interested in robbing someone, am I really going to go through the trouble of searching through social networks, cross-referencing information from people in my area, and only then starting to figure out which homes are (and aren't) worth robbing?

And of course, there are a number of very important variables that such an analysis ignores: Whether the person lives alone (or is renting the place out via AirBNB), whether they're in a building or single home, whether there is a burglar alarm, how good the police force is in that city, how easy it is to get into (and out of) the home in question, and whether there's anything worth stealing.

So it's an interesting experiment, but telling people to remove their names and geographical information from Instagram to avoid being robbed strikes me as a bit far fetched.

I run an e-mail list for people who live in my city (Modi'in, Israel), and we now have nearly 3,000 subscribers. People are constantly saying, "I'm going to be away on vacation during such-and-such a period of time. Does anyone need a short-term rental?" That strikes me as a far greater invitation to mischief and robbery than Instagram or any other social network.

[+] newaccountfool|11 years ago|reply
You may not do this for say, robbing joe blogs. But what happens if your going to rob a celeb who has 50k+ of jewlery in their house and you know they're going to be out of town filming for three weeks, or that they are doing a PR night so you have 8 hours before they return.

There are examples of this, popularized by the movie The Bling Ring[1].

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bling_Ring

[+] TeMPOraL|11 years ago|reply
> But this seems like a very high-threshold way to find out whether someone is home. I mean, if I'm really interested in robbing someone, am I really going to go through the trouble of searching through social networks, cross-referencing information from people in my area, and only then starting to figure out which homes are (and aren't) worth robbing?

If you are a professional robber, you might. This is something that scales well; you write it once and then you just sit and watch how the list of potential targets generates itself.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised to find such thing available as a service somewhere in the Deep Web. Hell, if one doesn't care about morality or law, then this is one of the best SaaS opportunities I have ever seen.

[+] avz|11 years ago|reply
For a single robber it may be a bit far fetched, but sooner or later a tech savvy one will realize he can provide this as a service to other robbers to reduce his personal risk and scale up revenue.

I think PDRM is a great initiative and hopefully it will become widely popular.

[+] poisontofu|11 years ago|reply
Is the name meant to riff on http://pleaserobme.com, a 2010 site with similar aims?
[+] billmalarky|11 years ago|reply
Hah, at first I was thinking they just updated the original site.
[+] devindotcom|11 years ago|reply
I was wondering about this myself. Hope OP can give some idea of what's going on here.
[+] watwut|11 years ago|reply
Mine home address is available to anybody from local yellow pages too.

Privacy is indeed important, but fear of robberies is not the reason why we should protect it. Nor is someones home address the supersecret info I desperately need to protect. There were maybe two facebook post triggered robberies worldwide. It is much easier to rob one of hundreds seemingly right now empty houses robber goes around every day then to analyze pictures and maps to find one random target.

[+] luch|11 years ago|reply
You might be surprised by the robbers' creativity and drive. For example, you can't put anymore the time and day of a wake in the local newspapers, since burglars used this info to break into the houses of the dead's relatives. Same thing for weddings.
[+] emilssolmanis|11 years ago|reply
The whole point of it is kind of moot though, an impulse burglar would just roam the neighbourhood to find a target and one with a specific target has better ways of finding out if the house is empty than 1 inhabitant posting to instagram... Not being at home is not what elicits criminal behaviour.
[+] lnanek2|11 years ago|reply
Doesn't seem very indicative of a good place to rob to me. If I'm not home, my wife usually is, and if we're not, the landlord also lives in the house, not to mention the dogs. The only things I own worth stealing are my computers anyway and those are all portable and stuffed in a backpack every weekday, locked in a hotel weekday nights, and often with me off at a hackathon on weekends. So if I'm taking a picture away from my house, most of the time the only thing I own worth anything is with me. If I was a robber I'd rather case houses in person.
[+] djur|11 years ago|reply
It seems like 'any house, during normal working hours' would be just as reliable a bet as a house determined through this kind of snooping.
[+] mobiuscog|11 years ago|reply
Reponsible behaviour would be informing just the owner of the photograph that they are potentially making themselves vulnerable.

Sharing the information with the internet at large is just being irresponsible in order to try and show off, no matter how many disclaimers are on the site.

[+] rcavezza|11 years ago|reply
Agreed.

"PDRM is meant to demonstrate how easy it is to find out where someone lives and if they are at home or not. The aim of this site is to educate and empower people to protect themselves better while using social media."

The target audience of a website like this is us on HN, not the people who need to receive the message about privacy.

[+] namnatulco|11 years ago|reply
I think it's far more interesting and productive to use facebook posts for this, rather than GPS coordinates in EXIF data and comparing it with a phone book (which is essentially what they're doing, according to the about page). Facebook posts often contain much more information and that information is easier to extract.

Realistically speaking, neither of these cases will be addressed. Although properly using the privacy settings can help, the entire reason people use tools like these is to express themselves about things they're seeing, and that usually doesn't happen at home. This coupled with the fact that the risk is extremely low, and that there are much better ways for a burglar to obtain this information, I don't think this is the best way to go about privacy awareness. It was probably fun to build, though.

[+] Aoyagi|11 years ago|reply
Why on earth is that site made primarily for touch controls? Am I the only one who finds these sliding (vertically or horizontally, doesn't matter) sites with tons of empty space and huge fonts extreme impractical or even obnoxious?
[+] VLM|11 years ago|reply
Classic "individual" vs "any" design pattern.

You want to find my specific kid for nefarious purposes or rob my specific house, modern technology makes that about a billion times easier than decades ago.

You want to find a kid for nefarious purposes or rob a house, any moron can find the nearest elementary school or drive around a subdivision watching cars pull out in the morning and swing back in 5 minutes and technology doesn't help very much at all. If anything technology makes it worse, too easy for nosy neighbor with an omnipresent cellphone to make a call.

So it's being marketed as technology makes it easier for a random scary dude to go after a random victim, but in reality the problem is crazy addicted coworker, crazy ex, crazy relative, not just random scary dude.

[+] philbarr|11 years ago|reply
As an aside, it is official UK policy to NOT respond to reports of someone's house alarm going off. If you ring 999 they'll ask you if you can actually see someone in the house robbing things and if you can't, they won't send anyone out.

The reason is that too many house alarms go off by accident, they don't have the manpower to check them all.

[+] rickyc091|11 years ago|reply
Yep, I was just going to say. Right when I moved into a new apartment, I didn’t know the security code to the alarm so it went off for a good 20 minutes. You could hear the alarm on the street, but no one seemed to care or pay too much attention to it. It reminded me of this http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/opinion/bike-thief.html
[+] GFischer|11 years ago|reply
Here in Uruguay, it's reasonably common to pay for private security, isn't it the case over there?

Police does not respond to house alarms here either (there's one in my block that sounds every other day, it defeats the purpose of having an alarm).

[+] marincounty|11 years ago|reply
I thought a a lot about this:

Anyone can rob your house/most apartments if they look like Construction workers/Landscapers.

Hide your jewelry where no one will find it; you might need to know a little bit about construction though.

In the end, make sure you have an ip cam that captures license plates, and a few in your house.

A smart criminal will have flip up plates, and wear desguises though.

Maybe that jewelry should go into a safe dep. box? Make sure you have no active judgements though? They can snatch it all up. They can also empty out your bank account. Be proactive, and don't give them a cent. Become Judgement Proof--if you have any one you trust your life with?

Burying in the backyard is not a bad idea, but don't do it drunk. I know a guy who lost $800,000 in Muir Beach after a night of hard partying. He woke up and couldn't find remember what he did with his ill gotten money, or maybe that's just what he told his wife?

[+] chippy|11 years ago|reply
It should (and the the previous PleaseRobMe.com also made this mistake) use the word "burglary" rather than "robbery". Edits - this could just be a British difference rather than a US one, if so, my bad!

Robbery is about theft (usually using force) from a person, whereas burglary is unlawful entry to and theft from that person's property. Since the person is not going to be there, the property is empty and ripe for burglary.

A more interesting and challenging PleaseDontRobMe would focus on where the target is, away from home securities, who they are with, the security situation of the country, the best escape routes relative to their location, locations of police, CCTVs etc. Much more interesting geographically in my opinion!

[+] meowface|11 years ago|reply
This is not just a British difference. Robbery always involves some form of threat or assault in the US, legally speaking. And colloquially speaking too, except in recent years where the word has lost some meaning.

The US vs. British difference is the verbage of "burglary" (though interestingly this article also confuses robbery with burglary). http://grammarist.com/usage/burgle-burglarize/

[+] jahewson|11 years ago|reply
Yes, though in the UK your house would be "burgled" but in the US it would be "burglarized".
[+] comeonnow|11 years ago|reply
IMO, the how to protect yourself should be more prominent and perhaps on the first slide/page.

I stopped using Instagram because I couldn't keep up with me post-dating my activities. It was more of a chore to remember to post a week or so later and 'pretend' I'm doing such activity now, instead I just didn't bother sharing.

I got a brand new car a few months back, and even though I wanted to share a pic (not to gloat) I knew it would be easy to track down, and due to where I live it's easy to see whether I was home or not. Not a rare car by any means, but how many '14 plate cars in particular colour in a particular model do you see in any one area? Matching cars could be 5-10 miles apart easy

Does anyone else think like this?

[+] jarek|11 years ago|reply
Car theft scenarios:

- look on instagram for nearby recent photos of fancy cars to steal

- visit neighbourhoods where rich people live and look for fancy cars to steal

[+] anjc|11 years ago|reply
There're a lot of comments saying thieves are too thick to use technology for robbing people. Maybe some are, but there are plenty of tech-savvy people with no scruples who might use information like this. To-order car thieves use plenty of technology to do their business, for example. And furthermore, I'm sure we all know plenty of houses that were mysteriously robbed at an opportune moment (the night everybody went on a trip, for example).

Thieves mightn't be cross-referencing databases using various API's, but they're not so thick as to miss opportunities that might present themselves through Facebook posts etc.

I don't see a problem with increasing awareness of the possibilities.

[+] GFischer|11 years ago|reply
The tech car-thieves use is pretty amazing, I work for an insurance company, and we've seen almost any kind of deterrent being easily defeated.

Some have gone to the extreme of bringing and installing an entire car dashboard to bypass custom keys.

I've seen videos of devices that purportedly copy most common alarms. Heck, it apparently costs U$ 5.

Snopes thinks it's fake:

http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/lockcode.asp

however most mainstream news sites report it as true:

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/new-5-device-easily-unlocks-car-doors-for-thieves-in-winnipeg-1.2288826

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/06/after-burglaries-mys...

[+] abolishme|11 years ago|reply
So, essentially:

    - if instagram?
      - if on_vacation?
        - if shared_home? == false
          - if dangerous_pets? == false
            = rob_them
          - else
            // wait  
        - elsif roommates_home?
          - if dangerous_pets? == false && if security_system? == false
              = rob_them
          - elsif house_guests?
            - if house_guests_home?
              // wait
            - else
              = rob_them
          - else
            = kill_pets + rob_them
        - else
          = rob_them
      - else
        // wait
    - else
      = chill_with_friends
Seems legit.
[+] justinpaulson|11 years ago|reply
It would be obviously difficult to pull off, but I'd like to see some estimations on how many robberies occurred based on information gained form social networks. I am guessing it is such a small percentage that these fears are completely irrational. If you are going to take the time to make this site and present this argument, I'd like to see some shred of data to substantiate your claims that social networks are really endangering the "careless people" who use them. Especially if you are going out of your way to call those people careless.
[+] rubiquity|11 years ago|reply
When I look at your site on my iPhone 5 in landscape mode the title changes from "Please Don't Rob Me" to just "Rob Me". You should consider fixing that.