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Man allegedly burgles home after cancelling Airbnb reservation
- fredley 10y ago* burgles. I tend to ignore these types of news articles, of the format: "[Pokemon Go/AirBnB/Uber/New Thing] used in crime!". Crime remains the same, the landscape and tools change. Crime rates have been dropping for decades, and continue to fall, new technologies are not bringing in a new crimewave, although you wouldn't know it from reading some news sources.
- ciaranm 10y agoDid you read the article? It's a police blog - and has a list of things to consider doing when letting a place on AirBnB et al. Doesn't at all appear to be what you think it is. Certainly not just a 'new article'.
- ryanlol 10y agoAre you sure? Specifically the list of things to consider seems to be something that gets posted over and over again, slightly modified for different contexts. There's been no lack of articles about burglars using social media sites to find empty homes, google "facebook burglary tips" (sans quotes) for lots of examples.
- Someone1234 10y agoBurglarize and burgles are synonyms, the correction is unneeded.
- andyjohnson0 10y agofredley looks to be from the UK, where we say "burgle" and nobody says "burglarize". Since the article is in a US publication, the use burglarize is fine, but it probably looks strange to non-USians.
- GordonS 10y agoAlso from the UK. Here the word 'burglarize' actually sounds quite ridiculous, like a word made up for comedy effect. Indeed, my wife just burst out laughing when I told her about 'burglarize', which she'd never heard before.
- linker3000 10y agoHave to agree (I'm in the UK too); horrible word. Could be worse - at least we weren't told that the person cancellized the accommodation they'd previously reservized on AirBnB.
- cpr 10y agoFrom the US, but I agree. It's part of the "police bureaucratic mentality" to Latinize and inflate common concepts to make them sound more important (to uneducated ears, at least).
- mikeash 10y agoMy favorite one is always "rate of speed." It gets used everywhere in policing, apparently, but it's completely ridiculous. The whole basis of the concept of "speed" is that it's a rate!
- fitchjo 10y ago
- DoubleGlazing 10y agoIn a somewhat similar vein, a few years back my wife got in to the whole Couchsurfing thing - which could be said to be a forerunner of AirBnB. A nice couple from the other side of the world stayed with us for the weekend. When they left I noticed they had taken six Intermec Windows CE warehouse scanners with them. I'd been working from home for a bit so that why I had them, I was updating the software to work with our new ERP system. They were backpacking so I'm not too sure what they planned to do with them. These devices are hard to hide and they didn't take the charging cradles. I had to pay to replace them out of my own pocket as our home insurance wouldn't cover work owned items.
- cloudjacker 10y agoWas it too late to chase them down?
- DoubleGlazing 10y agoI only noticed after they had left the country. I did go to the Guards (Irish police), but they confirmed what I thought that because they were now out of the country then there wasn't a lot that could be done. We also reported them to Couchsurfing who seemed completely disinterested.
- joe_momma 10y agoTechnology is always cool until the idiots and criminals figure out how to use it...
- noahmbarr 10y agoAirBnB must hate this type of news. It undermines the trust that is essential to bring "sellers" to their marketplace.
- et-al 10y agoNot necessarily. From my personal experience more Airbnb hosts are renting out places that aren't their primary residences, so there's nothing of value in the apartment (as mentioned in the article).
- Jabbles 10y agoI wonder if thieves build up reputation on AirBnB before burgling. I know this is reasonably easy to automate on eBay (buy many lowcost items), but it seems AirBnB's reputation system would be harder to game.
- ctvo 10y agoI had a new AirBnB account (0 reviews) and booked 3 places in advance and had 0 issues. Hosts are just glad to take someone's money most of the time, and aren't very picky. I don't think they'll need to game the system with fake reviews for a long time.
- patcheudor 10y ago"If you must leave these items at home, lock them in a safe that is secured to the floor of your home. Please remember that whatever is left at your home may be stolen, even if it is in a safe or hidden in a place you think nobody will ever find." This is odd advice. Essentially: "lock your stuff up in a safe but that's likely not sufficient." In fact, it's absolutely not sufficient because safes are rated based on how long it takes to get into them. If the thief is renting out a place which has the safe they'll get into it, especially since most people following the advice to lock their stuff up in a safe are likely not going to purchase anything stronger than a consumer grade safe, all of which tend to be fairly trivial to break into either covertly or through brute force given sufficient time. The better advice would be to not leave anything of value, period. A safe isn't going to save your stuff.
- ohitsdom 10y agoThat's a surprisingly helpful blog post from the police department. Very practical tips that will keep you safe from 98% of this kind of trouble.
- danny_taco 10y agoI'm surprised the police followed through with the information from the victim. I went through the same after being burglarized and I couldn't do anything because the detectives didn't care and/or were unreachable. This was in Houston though.
- JDiculous 10y agoThough this is only tangentially related - door locks with digital codes really need to be the standard. I live in NYC and have never seen this here. Meanwhile, in South Korea digital code locks seem to be the standard. Copying a key takes 2 seconds and costs less than a dollar. Giving your keys to someone is a huge security risk.
- Waterluvian 10y agoI mostly agree with you. But let's be fair about the process for getting a key copied: 1. Wander around the store finding someone who looks like they know how to copy a key 2. Follow them awkwardly while they finish helping someone else 3. Watch them wander through all the key templates to find the right one. 4. 20 seconds into the first attempt he notices a deformity and starts over. 5. 11 seconds into the second attempt, the key catches and goes soaring majestically across the store. 6. 53 seconds into the third attempt you finally have your key. 7. Discover you forgot your wallet. Still a bigger security risk than having digital lock doors.
- wavefunction 10y agoMy local grocer has a self-service machine that will copy a key in a minute or two.
- JDiculous 10y agoI actually got my keys copied last night and the whole process took 30-60 seconds.
- atwebb 10y agoAll the big and small box hardware stores around here have self service ones, I thin kit's $6 for 4 keys
- ghaff 10y agoMany of us don't routinely give out keys to people we don't have some sort of ongoing relationship with (whether personal or professional) so "really need to be the standard" seems rather strong. That said, if I were renting out a property or otherwise had a lot of different people who needed access, I would definitely install door locks with digital codes. (I actually have a keypad for my garage door but it would be a nuisance to reset.)
- legulere 10y agoI guess AirBnB will go the way of ebay: First thought to be for normal people to make their excess stuff to money, now a platform for big sellers.
- libpcap 10y agoThe "Breaking News" ticker at the top of that web page varies its height depending on the amount of text. As a result, the article annoyingly slides up and down when the ticker changes, making it hard to read.