Police Warning For Anyone Using Community Groups On Facebook

Crims are lurking


Article heading image for Police Warning For Anyone Using Community Groups On Facebook

Police are worried at the number of over-sharers hitting up Facebook, particularly when it comes to the upcoming trend of local community group pages. 

Superintendent David Tucker from Queensland Police says the pages are great for morale and community spirit, but we do need to be wary about how we use them. 

"What people fail to understand sometimes is that on these community pages, they could actually have the offenders watching. I mean, people don't need to give their credit card details to be on a lot of these community pages" 

"Sometimes that leaves residents very much open because the information can be accessed. People can see that people are away on holidays and that means that there's greater potential for those perpetrators to actually target those particular premises."

He says even something as simple as taking a photo can be enticing to lurking crims. 

"If it's inside the house that might give them a little bit of an idea as to what opportunities there are to steal stuff from there."

Superintendent Tucker says the other issue is people using Facebook for crime watch, but failing to notify authorites. 

"The real danger is where people are actually reporting criminal behaviour online and thinking that if they put it there, then someone is going to do something about it."

"From our perspective, it's really important that moderators of these community pages are looking at people that are putting information on there that really should be reported to the police and encouraging those people to make either the telephone call through to Police or alternatively going online through the policelink apps or police website and making the report there."

"At least, then, the police are becoming aware about what's going on within that local community"

He says that's how officers can keep track of crime stats, and decide which areas or suburbs need the likes of extra patrols. 

 

Claire Sherwood

5 September 2017

Article by:

Claire Sherwood




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