

How we used Tinder to catch the thief robbing startups in SF - jiyannwei
http://blog.buildzoom.com/buildzoom-office-burglary

======
swatow
tl;dr > _We created a Tinder profile using a picture of the woman who broke
into our office. This seemed like the easiest way to get her face in front of
a few thousand San Francisco residents._

I was hoping for some ingenious use of tinder (like assuming the thief was a
tinder user, and right swiping til they found them). Instead, they are simply
spamming their "wanted" photo on tinder to get more eyeballs.

Crime is a serious matter. We should take appropriate measures to identify
criminals and alert the police. Spamming is not an appropriate measure.

~~~
Shinkei
I think it's hard to judge so quickly when we could easily consider a sliding
scale of importance. If someone steals a pack of gum from the local CVS, I put
that much lower on the scale of importance than say an extreme of a child
being kidnapped... or in this case, theft of thousands of dollars worth of
computers including data, work, etc. We accept that "Amber Alerts" flash on
our phones, highways, emergency systems because society has decided that it's
important to get a lot of eyeballs. It's a public good. Well Tinder is a
private business, and as such they can certainly take down any 'spamming'
photo. But I am willing to bet a lot of users--especially justice-minded users
--could see this as a potential feature. Every 20-30 pics, a wanted ad is
posted and if you contribute to catching them... you get a reward or maybe
even some kind of 'good person flair' on Tinder. I'm just throwing ideas out
there... but really trying to show you that what you see as just 'spamming'
could actually be a huge opportunity both for Tinder users and Tinder itself.

~~~
swatow
It's pretty clear that this is a misuse of tinder according to its current
usage. In some alternate reality or future world when tinder explicitly
condones this, then your point would be valid.

I doubt tinder would consider this because the public benefit doesn't outweigh
the annoyance to users. If you want to spread the word, you can use Facebook,
which is actually better since people share what they think is important, so
it's more tuned to people's actual priorities.

~~~
Shinkei
>a misuse of tinder according to its current usage

So is the supposedly ingenious idea you mentioned of assuming the burglar is a
Tinder user and swiping through thousands of people (using bandwidth, making
themselves a fake profile, etc.) to find the correct one. They offloaded the
work of 1 second per thousands of people, rather than hours onto a single or
small group of people... for which there was no guarantee of success and no
real 'end.'

I think that their idea was pretty ingenious, especially if they are
successful in the end.

------
bsder
Um, a master key, presumably from the factory, was used to break into multiple
installations?

I think I would be sending a nice legal letter to the security company for not
telling me that such a master key existed or how to disable it. And sending
them the bill for replacing their broken security system.

~~~
dsl
I've used Doorking systems to gain entry before. It's not a "master key," just
a factory default that you are supposed to change.

If you notice in the video, she has her phone in her hand when she comes in.
Most likely because she added herself as a new tenant into the system. If she
didn't remove it after she left, her phone number should still be programmed
in.

------
bronson
Been HNized?

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6wBz6pO...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6wBz6pO5-SsJ:blog.buildzoom.com/buildzoom-
office-burglary+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

~~~
jiyannwei
Yeah - we got HNized. Putting it behind CloudFront. Should be up momentarily.

------
devonbleak
Where's the part where they actually get caught?

------
taternuts
It doesn't seem to have actually worked yet

~~~
crazypyro
I think its poor formatting or something. I've found other sources saying the
company found the contact details of the burglar within 2 days.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/burglar-who-targets-
silicon-v...](http://www.businessinsider.com/burglar-who-targets-silicon-
valley-startups-caught-on-tinder-2014-12)

------
jiyannwei
We're getting the blog back up. Good coverage is available here if you're
interested in the story: [http://www.businessinsider.com/burglar-who-targets-
silicon-v...](http://www.businessinsider.com/burglar-who-targets-silicon-
valley-startups-caught-on-tinder-2014-12)

------
seeingfurther
I think this has the potential to be a great business model for Tinder.

------
tux
I just see: "500 Internal Server Error"

~~~
jiyannwei
Sorry - the HN traffic just killed the server. We have the blog on a jalopy
instance. Fixing - should be back up momentarily.

------
steven2012
I'm pretty sure they need to use the term "alleged" until the person is
actually convicted.

