back to article Thieves plunder apartment for Facebook booty

São Paulo police are warning of the perils of flashing your wealth on Facebook after a teenager's snaps of his electronic equipment and foreign holidays on the social network prompted thieves to rob his family's apartment. The unnamed 16-year-old was targeted by a student at his school when he "boasted among friends and put …

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  1. sabba
    Facepalm

    Unfortunately...

    It's not just adolescents that post such information on social networking sites. The number of supposedly intelligent people I have had to warn about posting information about when they are off on holiday, their house is going to be unattended or that they have just purchased such and such high value device,

    1. Peter2 Silver badge

      How about we compromise and say "people with the maturity and intelligence of an adolescent"?

  2. Leona A
    Thumb Up

    "During their escape, they were intercepted by members of São Paulo's paramilitary police, and shot during a gun battle. They later died in hospital."

    Tough on Crime, Tough of the causes of Crime, "São Paulo" showing the UK how it should be done!

    1. jai

      tough on crime...

      and yet, a quick google for "Sao Paulo riot" shows that such toughness wouldn't have done anything to stop the London riots this year

    2. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      @Leona A

      Are you really advocating running gun battles on the streets of Britain?

    3. Sir Runcible Spoon

      Sir

      Obviously not much of a deterrent, although it keeps the prison population down.

      1. Elmer Phud

        "Obviously not much of a deterrent, although it keeps the prison population down."

        And where will the security(sic) companies get thier money from then?

    4. John Macintyre
      Alert

      2 cents

      While I admire the fact that these bastards I mean crims are no more, I don't fully agree with the argument that shooting criminals fixes the problem.

      The fact that the paramilitary are ready to shoot these guys is most likely the reason they are armed in the first place, so you've already increased gun power simply for a nice outcome. It won't mentioned crossfire, and it did mention holding up people, so innocents get more scared. The result is of scared innocents is to push the govt/police to arm more, which is then equalled by the crims arming more.

      Whether that be straight retaliation, or dodgy/incompetent cops, it is usually inevitable. We already see it here, cops now have tasers, and we see the occasional story of a criminal using them too (see recent headline about woman tasered then burried alive)

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Click, click you're dead

      The silly buggers should never have updated their own FB page while the robbery was in progress, I guess.....

      Interestingly, there is a story about a bungling burglar who did just that.... (however, he only got caught... not shot).

      http://www.wpix.com/news/wpix-robber-busted-facebook,0,6902146.story

    6. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
      Trollface

      They were probably shot because they did not pay their protection money to the Sao Paulo plods.

    7. Marvin the Martian
      Headmaster

      @Leona A: "tough on the causes of crime"

      In this case, an envious classmate.

      He's not shot, hence your statement is invalid.

  3. This post has been deleted by its author

  4. HP Cynic

    They stole almost nothing and died in the process. A happy ending!

  5. Thomas 4

    What's the problem?

    Just wait for the crims to start bragging about their shiny new gear in Twitter.

  6. Kirbini
    WTF?

    I don't follow...

    Two people are dead and the take away is "be careful what you post on Facebook"?

    1. Notas Badoff
      Facepalm

      Blaming the victims or the blamers or anybody convenient

      Just like the fellow further above who blamed the police having guns for the 'reason' that the criminals have had to arm themselves, misplacing, displacing or inverting blame is the favorite activity of many.

      Now you have inverted the cause / effect / blame cascade to be "two people died and this article isn't properly focusing on that tragedy!"

      Wasn't the article about "don't create situations that potentially could result in tragic consequences for the stupid" ? Surely that is more _usefully_ applying value to human life than "OMG2peepsdyd!"

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The facebook bragging seems to have directly caused the situation, so "be careful what you post on Facebook" would be a good lesson.

      Oh yeah, and "if you're planning a heist in Sao Paulo take either no guns at all, or a shitload of really big ones".

  7. mark 63 Silver badge

    wonder if any criminals watch "cribs" to plan their burglaries

  8. NightFox
    IT Angle

    Not convinced from reading this that the Facebook element of the story is of much relevance (apart from as a headline-grabber). Surely it was the kid's boasting at school that was the driver behind the robbery? OK, so he posted pictures on Facebook but I think this would have still happened anyway. If the Facebook posts had been such a heavy influence, I would have expected the intruders to have a better idea of what they were or weren't expecting to find once they'd broken in.

    1. adnim

      I agree

      Unless he posted his address on Facebook it likely had very little to do with it, if indeed anything at all. His keys were stolen by his class mate because he bragged about his wealth. If he had just posted images of his goodies to Facebook and kept his mouth shut would the robbery have still occurred? I can't help thinking it wouldn't.

  9. Goobertee
    FAIL

    Yet again

    Then, of course, there are those of us whose relatives were displaced by recent snowstorms and went to hotels for shelter. To fill the time, they posted their problems on their FB pages.

    Makes you proud to have technically adept relatives.

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