
Man allegedly burgles home after cancelling Airbnb reservation - mtviewdave
https://mountainviewpoliceblog.com/2016/08/22/man-allegedly-burglarizes-home-after-cancelling-airbnb-reservation/
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DoubleGlazing
In 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.

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cloudjacker
Was it too late to chase them down?

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DoubleGlazing
I 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.

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JDiculous
Though 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.

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Waterluvian
I 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.

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wavefunction
My local grocer has a self-service machine that will copy a key in a minute or
two.

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joe_momma
Technology is always cool until the idiots and criminals figure out how to use
it...

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noahmbarr
AirBnB must hate this type of news. It undermines the trust that is essential
to bring "sellers" to their marketplace.

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et-al
Not 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).

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ohitsdom
That'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.

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danny_taco
I'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.

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Jabbles
I 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.

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ctvo
I 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.

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legulere
I 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.

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patcheudor
"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.

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fredley
* 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.

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ciaranm
Did 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'.

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ryanlol
Are 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.

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ryanlol
Surprising amounts of downvotes (at least 5!), especially considering I was
just trying to provide another point of view when ciaranm was straight up
accusing fredley of not reading the article.

