These days most of us don’t think twice when tweeting about our latest travels or what our plans are for the day. However, recent attacks on celebrities may change our minds about the information we post on social media sites.
In the past year there has been increasing reports of criminal attacks on celebrity homes. Most recently, Helen Flanagan was at the forefront of a burglary, following her tweet that she was home alone; this led to three men holding her hostage and stealing thousands of pounds worth of jewellery and technology.
Steven Gerrard had his home burgled back in 2007 as he was playing a Champions League game against Marseille in the South of France, which was broadcast live on TV, whilst his wife Alex Curran was home alone. During this year there were a number of burglary attacks on football players as thieves knew the exact location of the players at the time.
Shockingly, a gang referred to as the ‘Real Bling Ring Gang’ in the US, used social networking sites such as Twitter and Instagram to find out which celebrities were out of town; seizing the opportunity to break in, knowing the million-dollar homes had been left unattended. This gang consisted of one boy and four girls and showed the dangers of revealing too much information on social media sites. Paris Hilton was also subject to burglary at the hands of the ‘Real Bling Ring Gang’ when they discovered that she was leaving a door key under her door mat every night.
The telegraph have created a list of ‘Golden rules’ for staying safe on Twitter (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/9057089/The-nine-golden-rules-of-Twitter.html), but here at apt we’ve created our own set to help you stay safe:
1. If you’re going on holiday or away from home, even just for a couple of hours, don’t tweet where or when you are going
2. Be careful of new followers that you don’t know personally
3. If you get involved in a twitter debate, be wary of arguments with strangers
4. Never upload explicit images/content
5. Don’t tweet about the company you work for, one wrong feeling could ruin a career.