I might tweet that I left the house - but my rather large dog stays home :)
Please Rob Me
81–90 of 134 posts
Re: Please Rob Me
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding spring guns, fun fact: it is illegal for you to make your home unsafe for burglars and other lawbreakers in most US states.
More generally, boobytrapping stuff has lots of potential harm to lots of potential people. (gas company employees, police, etc). The fact that it's also harmful to thiefs is tangential.
Intending to you kill someone for robbing you is illegal as well if you are not in danger (being at work in this case)
Re: Please Rob Me
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
More generally, boobytrapping stuff has lots of potential harm to lots of potential people. (gas company employees, police, etc). The fact that it's also harmful to thiefs is tangential.
My middle school got bitten by this. The roof collapsed on a burglar and he successfully sued the school. At the time he was not doing anything illegal (as he was outside a public school). The roof was unsafe and we have laws against that to protect HVAC technicians and the like. That he was up to no good was irrelevant.
I'd presume that trespass would apply to this situation, although it would not likely invalidate the lawsuit outright.
Re: Please Rob Me
#84Makes me think a twitter bot might be useful, that takes over the account and twitters mundane activities (cooking, watching TV,...). If you leave the house, you can switch on the twitter bot.
Makes me think whether using Twitter is worth it.
Re: Please Rob Me
#85It made me wonder what are else things we leak, using Twitter.
Re: Please Rob Me
#86To be fair, pretty much every single person with a job leaves their home empty all day. Everyone already knows this. I can't wait until I get to read about someone who decided to rob one of these people, but then gets shot to death by the spring gun they set up. Bonus if the spring gun auto-uploads to YouTube.
Good point. But one of the key robbin times is vacation. People definitely tweet about that.
Re: Please Rob Me
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in the habit of telling taxi drivers who pick me up from my house and ask me "so, you're going to the airport, taking a long trip?" That it's a short trip and that my roommates were just too lazy to take me to the airport. Makes me feel slightly better about someone knowing where I live and that I just left town.
Or you could have the taxi pick you up at a nearby intersection or other non-home location. Bonus points for using a different location each time.
Consistently using the same non-home location is probably better. If you're moving it around, the average location for your pickups is probably pretty close to where your home actually is.
For the ultra-paranoid, pick a spot away from your home, and always pick a location randomly within a predefined circle around that point.
Re: Please Rob Me
#88I might tweet that I left the house - but my rather large dog stays home :)
Same here. Not everyone lives alone. Many people have spouses, girlfriends/boyfriends, roommates, and/or pets around after they leave. And this site doesn't give you their home address, it just says that user's house might be empty right now. Still gotta go look, I suppose.
Re: Please Rob Me
#89Re: Please Rob Me
#90This is the ultimate free source of leads for home security and alarm businesses. Edit: They could drive around the neighborhood dropping off flyers saying, "While you were out at "place homeowner checked into" someone could have been robbing you blind.
There is a lot of money to be made in the lead generation business. I actually heard of an auto repair lead generation company that went around to parking lots and took pictures of cars with damage. They uploaded these photos to their service and then put a flyer on the car with a web address where the person could retrieve the quotes for repairs.
That is a really nice service. Most people dread getting quotes, it would remove a lot of the friction required to aquire a customer.
I imagine they received a few complaints though.