Yep, the premise of this is pretty ridiculous. Out of 80k they only identified 2700 homes. How many of those are actually within a reachable distance and how can you be sure those people also live alone. I'd bet a large percentage of users posting on Instagram probably also live with their parents and therefore there's a chance the house won't be empty.

So what are you left with? A few hundred? That's assuming the average burglar would even bother to do any of this as opposed to just staking out a house for a few hours with poor security.

An old trick I've heard is to have someone call the house's landline while you are robbing it. As long as the phone is ringing, you can be reasonably sure that no one is home.

A lot of families, including my own, will not answer the phone if they're asleep or busy. Or more commonly, if the caller is not recognized on caller ID they'll just let it ring.

If you call the same number 10 times in a row, or let it ring for minutes, you can be reasonably sure nobody is home. Most people would at least get pissed and pick the phone up, if only to slam it back down.

Well now your phone is linked to the robbery. One call might be explainable but 10 is pretty suspicious, especially if you do it at multiple crimes.

I'm sure it's not too hard to anonymously get a phone number. Google voice perhaps?

That would only be anonymous to the recipient. Google still has a map from your actual account and phone number to your Google voice number.

Payphones.

Far too low-tech for HN.

It's easy. Tor + anonymous BTC purchase of VoIP. Getting BTC is the harder problem.

> If you call the same number 10 times in a row, or let it ring for minutes, you can be reasonably sure nobody is home.

If it has an automatic answering system, you can't "let it ring for minutes", and if it has the ringer turned off (and there are lots of people who, with an answering, do this by default) then it won't even ring at all (though you'll think it is ringing.)

Too late, the telemarketers already (effectively) doing this.

VoIP# -> unpublished home line (+ Mobile)

Home line 'protected' from autodialers by old fax machine, 4 rings then silence. Only political calls seem undeterred.

You'd let it ring for an hour?

Many houses do not have a landline anymore (at least for the people I know in the Netherlands). It will only get less anyway.

I'm not sure about over there, but here in the US I feel most of the remaining landlines are used by the elderly, which just so happen to be the desired targets of many robbers.

Why not do it yourself before?

I guess the idea is to have the person calling be watching the house, and hang up if anyone approaches. Phone stops ringing? Swift exit out the back.

For added ROI, visit http://mansionmap.com/ before :-)

Agree that it's silly. At best it gives you positive data about places where people are. It says nothing about the state of the places where they are not, except that they are not in those places. Just because one of those places happens to be the one they live in doesn't make it fit for a quick burglary.

Locally we had a huge problem with door to door salesmen who would case the place out. They walk around suburban residential neighborhoods at noon on a weekday when probably half the houses are empty, maybe with a ladder as a prop, hard hats, clipboards, etc. If no one answers the door 3 times at 1:30pm on a Tuesday, then on the fourth time they pull up in a truck, break the back door, clean the place out, drive to the next house, etc.

They also went around on trash day recording on their map who was throwing out giant cardboard boxes formerly containing large screen TVs, but those are now getting so cheap and so uncomfortably large that they're not so much of a target anymore. My 42 inch would have sold for several thousand maybe a decade ago, but now its just a couple hundred bucks, why even bother, compared to grabbing some laptops or jewelry.

That would be incredible commitment if they came back three times to guess at schedules.

Most home robberies are of the kick the door in, grab the obvious valuables in literally seconds, and get out and away variety. The door-to-door ruse is a perfect filter that there probably isn't a person or a big dog behind the door.

Door-to-door campaigns have always been an enormous nuisance, but in light of their use by criminals (well, more obvious criminals), it really needs to be prohibited.

I use to work on a system that monitored when customers were going to be away on vacation.

If you also had data on whether or not they had an alarm system then that could be a very dangerous combination.

I would never rob anyone though, risk too high, reward too low, and I'd feel bad.

Plus, where I live most people own a gun, it would not be wise to break down my door. Yes, I put a gun in the bathroom when I shower and poop.

One of my biggest fears is being asleep and having sleep paralysis and not being able to defend myself at night. Although I'm not sure if I'm just dreaming that I have sleep paralysis or not, I strongly suspect I am but it's hard to test.

I agree, this would most likely only pose much of a thread to people like celebrities, where the potential gain is very high.

For the average person it's much more likely that the burglar is just using opportunity. For example they saw you leave shortly before 9:00 or your house just happens to look empty during the day.

That's by no means to say that this project is a bad idea. I think anything that attempts to teach people to be more careful about the information they put out there in public online is absolutely a good idea as this kind of information could be used for purposes other than burglary.

Presumably it's easier to rob a house at night. If someone is away, you can do that.

Between 60%[1] and 75%[2] of burglaries occur during the day.

I've been burgled before. They dressed up in white "painters" overalls, carried some tools and no one asked anything. Broad daylight, broke the door.

[1] http://homesecurity.lifetips.com/faq/139392/0/do-burglaries-...

[2] http://www.apartmentwiz.com/houston_apartments_information/w...

Steel toe-caps, a hi-visibility jacket and some emulsion-spattered trousers will allow one to get away with pretty much anything, even in the broadest of broad daylight.

We once cut the lock on a friend's very nice bike (she lost the key) using an angle grinder and a miniature generator, in the middle of the high street in the middle of the afternoon, and nobody batted an eyelid. We were dressed in normal clothes. TBF we probably got away with that because it was so blatant. Still, it's amazing what people will ignore. Bystander effect and all that.

Two relevant videos. This guy attempted to 'steal' his own bike in NYC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGttmR2DTY8

There's also this one. First, a white guy. Then, a black guy. Finally, a woman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge7i60GuNRg

> We once cut the lock on a friend's very nice bike (she lost the key) using an angle grinder and a miniature generator, in the middle of the high street in the middle of the afternoon, and nobody batted an eyelid.

What should have they done?

Call the police? What would the police do? Question you? Ask about your identities? How would they identify your friend as the owner of the bike?

Since moving to Toronto I've witnessed three people trying to smash locks in street. I stopped them all and asked "Should I believe you should be doing that?"

Two of them said they owned the bike and gave some plausible explanation and way to back it up, and were prepared for me to check. They both thanked me for asking.

The third one told me to fuck off, and ran away.

Certainly the first two could have been thieves, I'll never know.

Props for trying. I would like to think I would do the same in such a scenario but it does seem like a personal safety risk. Although I'd hope to not get shot over a bike, there are people who have been shot over shoes before.

Being in Toronto probably helps that. I'm sure there are parts of town where it'd be better to keep walking, but downtown isn't like that.

Well, nice bikes are commonly engraved with postcodes here, so that would be something. I'd have expected for some people to at least stare at us or something, but it was like people were trying their best to ignore us, like we had the Somebody Else's Problem field from hhgg, which I suppose we did.

I suppose that's my point really: most of "security" is just the social contract in action. The reason you don't get robbed is because nobody wants to rob you.

> What would the police do? Question you? Ask about your identities?

That might actually be useful if the record your ID and later connect it with a bike getting reported as stolen at that location.

> Call the police? What would the police do? Question you?

Yes! And then you can write a blog post about living in a police state and getting interrogated for going about your business.

Same experience. Nobody even questioned why I was trying to break into a car with a coat hanger at the gas station. Maybe the attendants inside saw me get out of it but one guy actually stopped and tried to help get it open (he admitted he had less experience than me at it). It was at least half an hour on one of our main streets.

Many years ago a friend was arrested for tampering with ATMs, at the jail they told him it was his fault because he was doing it late in the night. According to the crime scholars there, everything you do late at night is suspicious and likely to get police attention. Indeed, he was arrested when he was leaving the ATM and the officer spotted the packs of bills on his jacket in a routine frisk (in Brazil an officer can make arbitrary pat downs).

It might be easier to burgle a house during the day, when the target and the neighbours are more likely to be at work. Anecdotally, my house was burgled around 3pm and my friends was also burgled whilst at work.

Most robberies happen during the day when people are in work and streets are noisy. Attempting to rob city house in night sounds like even more stupid thing then daytime robbery.

There are valid scenarios for robbing during the night - for example in many holiday destinations with villas, holiday apartments etc. it is expected that when there are people inside the house, there is also cash money, laptops, tablets, smart phones and other small easily carriable items with value worth the effort available.