LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Trash outside your home can tip off thieves after the holidays, but posting photos on social media can also catch the attention of the wrong people.
Officer Eric Barnes with Little Rock police said sharing photos of your things isn’t always safe.
“Now, it’s not only boxes that have been left on the curb, but you can share and use hashtags and that kind of links people to your account,” Barnes said.
He fears people may be oversharing with those they don’t know very well.
“You’re really inviting someone you may not know into your private space, your house,” Barnes said.
As technology advances, so do thieves’ methods of looking for expensive things to steal.
“It’s one thing to share with your friends and your family, but whenever you’re on a networking site like that--Facebook, Instagram--you’ve got to be mindful of who’s sharing your photos, who’s liking your photos,” Barnes said.
There are ways people can track your photo.
“Most of the pictures taken these days are taken with smartphones and smartphones, by default, will have location services turned on for their photos,” Best said.
I.T. firm owner of Biz Tek and realtor Roger Best said there are ways to pull up metadata on your photo and view the address where it was taken.
“Literally takes minutes to pull that up,” Best said.
A photo of a home he’s selling doesn’t show an address or house number, but using a program pre-installed on Microsoft makes it easy to find.
“It shows you the date the photo was taken. It shows you the resolution, the dimensions of the photo, the GPS location--that is exactly the location of where that photo was taken,” Best said.
It’s good to check your privacy settings and keep them secure, but they only go so far.
“One of my foundational premises that I always tell my clients ‘whatever one person can create, another person can break,’ also known as hack,” Best said.
Little Rock police said they’ve seen the most issues arise out of people posting high dollar electronics, like TVs. Your safest option is to keep it offline.