Skip to main content

Student breaks into home to use Facebook, caught after not logging out

Facebook browsing
Image used with permission by copyright holder

In a bizarre incident detailed by CBS Atlanta this week, an 18-year-old girl broke into a home located in Athens, Georgia last Sunday and was found browsing Facebook on the homeowner’s laptop. After being discovered by the 33-year-old homeowner just after noon, the embarrassed girl hurriedly gathered her things, stumbled through an apology and quickly exited the home. After the intruder left the home, the homeowner checked the laptop to find the girl neglected to log out of Facebook before leaving.

Facebook LoginThe information on the social network quickly led police to the University of Georgia where the unidentified 18-year-old girl lives as a student in one of the residence halls. The photos on her Facebook profile page allowed the police to quickly locate her.

The profile page also included the student’s mobile phone number, but a call placed to her phone by police went straight to voice mail. However, a chat log was recovered from the Facebook account. It contained a conversation in which the student had invited a friend to the home and supplied the physical address as well. 

Oddly enough, the homeowner also discovered that her couch was soaked in urine after the intruder rushed out of the house. As of Monday, the incident was still under investigation by the local police department and the police have yet to determine how the intruder gained access to the home. No details have been released on the name of the victim or the name of the intruder. 

This isn’t the first time that Facebook has played a roll in catching a criminal. During May 2012, two men robbed an Internet cafe in Columbia, but neglected to log out of Facebook prior to executing the robbery. During July 2012, a 27-year-old man broke the conditions of his probation by leaving the state of Oregon, but was caught by police after posting his geographic location on his Facebook account.

Topics
Mike Flacy
By day, I'm the content and social media manager for High-Def Digest, Steve's Digicams and The CheckOut on Ben's Bargains…
X rival Threads could be about to get millions of more users
Instagram Threads app.

Threads -- Meta’s rival to X, formerly Twitter -- has just launched in the European Union (EU), a market with nearly half a billion people.

The app launched in the U.S. to much fanfare in July, with Meta hoping to attract X users disillusioned with the turbulence on the platform since Elon Musk acquired it for $44 billion 14 months ago.

Read more
X (formerly Twitter) returns after global outage
A white X on a black background, which could be Twitter's new logo.

X, formerly known as Twitter, went down for about 90 minutes for users worldwide early on Thursday ET.

Anyone opening the social media app across all platforms was met with a blank timeline. On desktop, users saw a message that simply read, "Welcome to X," while on mobile the app showed suggestions for accounts to follow.

Read more
How to create multiple profiles on a Facebook account
A series of social media app icons on a colorful smartphone screen.

Facebook (and, by extension, Meta) are particular in the way that they allow users to create accounts and interact with their platform. Being the opposite of the typical anonymous service, Facebook sticks to the rule of one account per one person. However, Facebook allows its users to create multiple profiles that are all linked to one main Facebook account.

In much the same way as Japanese philosophy tells us we have three faces — one to show the world, one to show family, and one to show no one but ourselves — these profiles allow us to put a different 'face' out to different aspects or hobbies. One profile can keep tabs on your friends, while another goes hardcore into networking and selling tech on Facebook Marketplace.

Read more