As mentioned by the BBC News recently, a 17-year-old girl was visiting her grandmother in Sydney, Australia when she took a picture of a ”large sum of cash” while helping her grandmother count her cash savings at the home. The teenager posted the picture on her Facebook feed around 4 p.m. on Thursday May 24. Approximately seven hours later, two masked men armed with a wooden club and a knife entered the girl’s family home 75 miles away in the town of Bundanoon. Upon entering the family home, the men found the 47-year-old mother of the girl as well as a 58-year-old man and 14-year-old boy, likely her father and brother.
When speaking to the family, the two men wanted to talk to the girl about the sum of money in the picture that was posted on Facebook. After the girl’s mother convinced the two armed men that her daughter no longer lived at the address, they “took a small amount of cash and other personal property before leaving the house” according to the official police statement regarding the incident.
While no one was injured during the robbery, it’s clear that the two men were able to determine the location of the home from information posted on the teenage girl’s Facebook account. It’s also possible that at least one of the two men were friends with the girl on Facebook and were aware of the location of her family’s home.
Also within the official statement, the police reminded the public to be careful of the type of information that’s posted on social networks like Facebook. With the rise in popularity of geotagging photos with location data prior to posting on a social network, Facebook users may want to use groups to limit the amount of sharing among their entire friend’s list and avoid using public posts when publishing personal information or location data.
clever girl :(
Why would this be a sponsored ad? Who would pay to repeat this story..
Amazing!
Why would this be a sponsored ad? Who would pay to repeat this story..
dont talk about money on here.
Camera phones with GPS capability might include the coordinates of the location in a tag field of the digital photo. It’s best to disable that feature if you consider posting it later. Alternatively, there is SW that can strip this type of data from the image file.
good point…..
Another generation of Einsteins.
Lazy and/or careless to add a file photo of American cash when this happened on the other side of the planet.
Probably because its the only currency you can spend anywhere in the world.
So the police should post pictures like this, and stories that the only people around are a couple of kids who found their parents cash stash, and sit back and wait for the vultures. Excessive force leading to death is recommended.
Mexigogue likes this story.
Teenage girls added to facebook added to posting photos unsupervised equals TOTAL disaster, case in point. This girl has the IQ of a grapefruit.
you clearly underestimate the IQ of a grapefruit!
This is something everyone should go over with children – but they don’t. Don’t brag and don’t disclose information that can cost you and teach kids how they can unintentionally leak information out I bought an 11-year old nephew a saxophone that was made in 1984 and has it’s share of marching band scratches, but is so good it’s worth $1000. Since most of the sax kids in his school band have cheap $295-$595 thin Chinese-made junk or rent ($71/month!), one of the first things I did after spending $450 to have all the keys re-padded was to tell him to never brag about how good his sax is or he may find it missing if it ever has to be left in the band room. You can’t assume kids will realize this – especially when their first thoughts are, “I can’t wait to tell my friends what good thing I got!” Similarly, this week I sent out 25 photos by email of the home my sister’s family just bought and I screened them to make sure nothing private (like keys on a peg somewhere) was showing.
What do you expect from people that drink Fosters Beer?
Only Americans drink Fosters. Australians drink Victoria Bitter. Just sayin’.
lucky they were not so easily talked down about this,it could of wound up alot more serious.
Cmon this is Austrailia we’re talking about.. Land of British convict DNA..
And why would you share status updates with non-friends on Facebook?
Because she was stupid, wanted to ‘brag’ about the large amount of money that wasn’t even hers that she was sitting close to, carefully counting because her grandmother’s probably an attention whore too. Bust out the grandkid to help you count your stash? Yeah you might be an attention whore if you find yourself doing that.
Were the doors unlocked? Anyway, too bad the robbers weren’t wasted. Anyway kids shouldn’t be on the internet.
Common sense surrendered a long long time ago. Right around when religion got popular.
She gave her friends the address in advance, said ‘grammy asked me to come over and count her moneh, that bitch is so rich and it pisses me off. When I send you the signal online, you can break in and rob the place. I want 33%!
Everyone’s after the almighty [dollar.] Speaking of which…
If money is the root of all evil, why do churches beg for it? There is no god. Get over it. EVOLVE.
“If money is the root of all evil” Thats not what the Bible sayes. It sayes that the LOVE of money is the root of all evil. Money is completly amoral just like a hammer or a pencil. It all depends on how it is used.
So, no one seems to have commented on the photo accompanying this article, which shows dozens of US $100 bills. But the text of the article says that the photo posted online was supposed to show the grandmother’s savings, and that she lived in Sydney, Australia. So why isn’t the photo showing Australian currency?
I’m thinking the photo accompanying the article is, in fact, NOT the actual photo posted online, in which case, ethically, there should have been a disclaimer (something like “file photo”). Or did grandma somehow accumulate several thousands of dollars of new US hundred dollar bills that she kept around the house stashed here and there – in which case, it would have been natural, I think, to have at least mentioned that fact in the story. It certainly leads me to question whole integrity of the article. How about it Mr. Flacy? Unethical, lazy, or fraud?
Are you retarded?
Yes. he’s retarded. Doesn’t understand ‘stock photography’ or ‘stock footage.’ Because, like, there’s this law that says when posting on the internet, you HAVE to include a pic, and that pic HAS to be somehow related to the story next to it.
Jesus christ it must suck to be as dumb as you. Oh yeah ‘unethical’ to provide a generic pic of money with an article on — wait for it — money.
I find it interesting how you post that there is no God; and then in the next post you say “Jesus Christ”. Who’s retarded now? Yup….that’s correct : YOU. ……and as a side note, what does atheism have to do with this thread? Yup…..correct again…..NOTHING. Why dont you try to find a message board for person’s with extremely low IQs…..I’m sure you will find someone to agree with you there. Oh, btw, I truly dont care what INTELLIGENT reply you post to in response to my posting, so dont waste your time.
Sincerely,
PROUDPREACHERSDAUGHTER
If thiefs aren’t careful they could easily end up in a deadly woman’s home like in the Deadly women’s trap like in the true crime show?
Someone could easily set a trap for would be thiefs by showing a lot of valuables on face book and wait for the thiefs to invade home…like a trap door in the floor and thiefs walk in and land inside a lg cage! Or police could be waiting for thiefs to go to house? But someone might of thought of that and are waiting for thiefs! Like some people got letter in mail saying they won a prize and they could pick it up at certain place and when they got there police were waiting for them to arrest on oustanding warrants!
Well, the words “grounded for life” come to mind for me????
A good beating and sodomization should teach her the lesson.
really?? Thats how we should handle situations like this involving our children who may or may not have known any better. Not knowing the situation of her home life i would assume that possibily this wasnt something the family expected to happen to them therefor probably didnt address the issue, so i guess if it were me i would talk with her and explain what could have happened and how dangrous the situation could have been and of course this should not happen again.
Though some may view your comment as offensive, you make a valid point about how the situation could have ended up–and has to others.
Just the fact that you know how to spell sodomization is sick/
I see you can spell it also :)
You mean with a foot of course !!!
My place is Scawns Menheniot Liskeard Cornwall I keep all my spare thousands in a draw in my office third window on the left of my front door.. Tell me when you are arriving so I can switch off the alarm and kennel the Rottweilers They have been very hungry lately.
Hey Guys I know a place thats got a ton of cash just ripe for you to invest in.
The Bank of England London England Go To It My buckaroos
if you can’t steal from your friends, who can you steal from? sheesh!
LOL! Yes; “friends.”
@Joshua..agreed
It’s possible they were friends? POSSIBLE? More like almost a certainty! Nobody has enough information on Facebook public that two random criminals could storm your house within hours. Clearly this girls thought she was a gangster and hung out with criminals who would literally stab her in the back for some money. This sensationalist article desperately tries to blame Facebook. That’s like blaming the sidewalk for the crime. The girl is 100% at fault. Let’s all take a guess why she doesn’t live with her parents anymore. hmm?
what you people dont believe in banks in your country? even a safe deposit box would of been smarter than hoarding that much cash at home
The masked men simply got the wrong house. The girl did in fact take the picture @ her G.M.’s house & posted it while still on vacation @ her G.M.’s home. The men accessed the wrong location of her whereabouts when in fact she was only 75 miles away (with the cash, of course) Message to Grandmother:stop stuffing your mattress, and put your money in a bank/deposit box. Only keep $20 or less cash @residence.
dont talk about money on here.
FB sells private message to Advertisers, I wonder if those people were with a advertising company
If she took the picture at her grandmother’s house, but the robbers broke into her parent’s house, wouldn’t that mean they knew where she lived and not that they used the gps coordinates in the picture?
Why is the teenage girl being blamed for this one? It is very reasonable to think that you can post a picture on the internet without giving away your location. Clearly, the robbers didn’t know the girl very well, if at all, since they didn’t know she didn’t live there. They likely got her address from GPS coordinates attached in metadata to her photographs. Why doesn’t FB strip away the metadata for personal protection? Oh, because their business is to make money even when its at the expense of personal safety.
She is part to blame for posting up the picture on facebook in the first place. There are times when your location is given away. She should have used common sense but in this generation it’s not being used very often.
At least were not the generation that got us into: War, Debt, a lower standard of living and the highest foreclosure rate ever. Give the girl a break Dougie, she is only seventeen, FB is only about seven and the crime is rising because of a lack of resources caused by the older generation.
Too bad that the Ossies aren’t allowed firearms. The outcome would have been a lot different.
yes. The girls family would have been shot to death.
The right to bear arms is a deterrent to criminals … armed with a club and a knife ??? … If that were my house they entered, I would have called the police to bring two body bags !!!
Children are getting more and more ignorant each year. I don’t want to live on this planet anymore :(
I forget… Who is it that raises these children to be knowledgeable, moral, and productive members of society?
Oh yeah they are… thats why they can write computer programs, start companies, and create more ideas and products then any previous generation. I cant believe I didnt think of it sooner Ken, its because your generation was too smart to do any of that. Your generation was smarter because you knew to use less of the resources you had in order to accomplish less production, which took longer and in the process, you guys figured out how to efficiently waste the non-renewable resources as fast as possible so that our generation could spend large portions of our lives figuring out how to CREATE renewable resources. Man if only a few people from your class and generation could have written something down so that us whipper-snappers could have learned to be as smart as the baby boomers, then we would know how to create retirement communities for all of you. Oh well, instead looks like youll just have to live with our stupidity until were are smart enough to make around three times as much as you did in order to move out on our own.
oh my. just different resources. do you think people from ‘your’ generation would have come up with an ipod if you would have been born in 1800? XD I’m getting a sense of a slight lack of history knowledge here… but at least there’s some knowledge about some of the U.S… in the 2000′s…. :P ;)
This isn’t the picture that was posted on Facebook. Since when do Australians use *American* currency in their homeland?
Leave it to a show offf to cost someone else their life and assets. She should have been beat but good and banned from using any media.
Of course because that must be how you like to be treated…
Maybe she should be beat and sodomized.
Just goes to show you – keep your personal business to yourself….showing off only leads to trouble…just plain DUMB!! :/
Hell if they had that much cash laying around they needed toshare it.
Hell if they had that much cash laying around they needed toshare it.
Why would this be a sponsored ad? Who would pay to repeat this story..
Lmao
Katangahan tawag dyan.
clever girl :(
It’s the real world tooo
wow.. you really need to watch what you are putting on your facebook..
NO JUST DONT POST YOUR ADDRESS,OR PHONE #
No. you really need to watch what you are putting on FB… see news article above for details as to why.
I hope people in law enforcement are reading this article. This would be a great way to catch criminals. Sort of like the sting to catch people with outstanding warrants by inviting them to a party where they were guaranteed to win a prize. The prize of course was to be arrested.
People say that Facebook sucks because they don’t know how to use technology properly over privacy and security.
There never was privacy or security!
shame on you girl!
People like to blame the Internet when the things still happened before. They speak as if you dont have the power to turn if off. Read a poster at our school about cyber bullying. Isn’t it possitive the bully’s wont be having egg your house now. Why not let us humans deal with our human nature. The beauracrats stick to planning roads etc.
Hilarious!
Stupid . . .
Idiot…
wrong currency in the pic…. the one in the pic isn’t as good atm ;-)
it’s always as good, because it’s steady.
Amazing!
wooooooooooooooooooooooow
was thinking of taking a pic of my empty wallet maybe someone will come and fill it for me.
haha nice.
That is an awesomely funny post!!! TY for the laugh, I needed it today : )
Wow. Over a hundred years ago most of the breakthroughs in science came about leading to our technology today. . . it’s 2012 and people still don’t know how to use it properly.
Its 2012 and we still JUST got out of the woods. I mean really there are still people living in the woods, so technically were not out of them yet…
Social (network) Darwinism.
Smart girl lol
Some people just lack a serious amount of common sense…
will always be remembered as the dip-shit of the neighborhood.
That’s one pure example of creating stupidity over privacy.
Wtf…
I don’t usually condone stealing, but there are many degrees of stupid, and stealing is slightly less stupid than posting a picture of a large amount of money on facebook…
The future leaders of tomorrow ladies and gentleman!
Just when you think the depths of over-sharing had finally been reached, some teenager out there finds a new way to set the tone all over again.
Arent teenagers always the overachievers?
Wow. Over a hundred years ago most of the breakthroughs in science came about leading to our technology today. . . it’s 2012 and people still don’t know how to use it properly.
Don’t confuse technology with intelligence. haha
sooooooooo true. and common sense, goes along way too.
did ya ever hear of the atom bomb???