Facebook ad helps Scot cops seize fake goods, drugs Cash, drugs and illegal goods have been seized in Scotland after coppers logged into Facebook to snare the crooks. The plod bagged over £68,000 in cash, drugs valued at £21,000 and £13,000 of counterfeit goods during Operation Opulent, which followed a campaign that let people report via the web anyone thought to be making …
"plenty, but if they were procured illegally then they are fair game. who cares where the info comes from."
Agreed on that point, but that wasn't the point I was making. How many *innocent* people had assets confiscated and themselves stigmatised because of vindictive ex-spouses etc filing false reports was my main point.
Did the police actually check the provenance of complaints and obtain other evidence that the gains were ill-gotten before kicking in doors and walking out with someone's stuff? Given the way the UK seems to work these days, somehow I doubt it.
Why not just look for people living lavish lifestyles with no obvious means of support?
The police could cross-reference HMRC's tax data against the DVLA's car ownership records. Look for males, aged under 35, with low/no income but who drive a "bling" car - Range Rovers, M-Sport BMWs, etc. They won't all be drug-dealers, but you'd certainly find a higher proportion than in the population at large.
Who would have thought that. Do you think now they've discovered store and forward it could be applied to internet technology more widely? Oh, I see...
Moving on, in 2009 we read from http://www.ukpayments.org.uk
"It is just 12 years since internet banking began, but its popularity has grown so much that, in the first half of 2009, 22 million adults used internet banking on their main current account. This means that for the first time ever more than 50 per cent of regular internet users (41.4 million) are banking online. The number of people banking over the telephone has declined to 14.5 million from a high of 16.1 million in 2005, as many of us have found it more convenient to switch from banking over the phone to the internet."
In 2011
"The ease and convenience of making payments and managing our finances online means that a quarter of internet users now log on to internet banking every day, while a further two in five (39%) use internet banking at least weekly. And it seems that once you’ve tried internet banking, the convenience is hard to beat - only 13% of online Brits make a weekly trip to their local bank branch to manage their money."
online, no queuing, no bloody music, no "your call will be recorded for training purposes", no security questions, no stupid questions, no on-selling of any kind, no commitment until you press send...
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