Tuesday, March 03, 2009

GPS Skullduggery

I apologize for a dry spell lately. I have a new Blackberry and I recorded a bunch of fun photos on it and then realized I deleted them before it was actually done emailing them, which means they're completely gone. I'm wiser, yet sad. Gone is my picture of Kyle eating breakfast with Ming and I over the weekend. Gone are the pictures I took at my father in law's 60th birthday. A loss because they were fun pictures of kids. But at least I don't have to explain why I don't have any pictures of the bevy of women with their T&A falling out who were at the boxing match next door. Gone is my picture of a guy who looks like She Says' husband in silhouette, pointing at a hair stylist sign just as she was complaining he needed a haircut. Gone is a picture of a second sign from the same location where a guy seems to be doing something unmentionable to himself. However, I still have pictures of a Snuglie and one of Pimento's eggs, so I'll post those later.

I did learn how to record Eryn saying "I love you Dad" onto the Blackberry. At least I have that going for me. I can annoy other managers with cutesy kid crap until they're done with me.

She Says sent me a warning today about the evils of owning a GPS. This isn't a huge deal as I don't own one and, just like everyone else, I'm cutting back on spending so I'm unlikely to buy one. But it was interesting because a local blogger, Bill Roehl of Lazy Lightning, blogged about exactly the reverse on the same day, and even in my county. So now I don't know what to do...it's a real poser. Buy a GPS so a thief can capture it. Or buy a GPS to capture a thief.

From She Says:

GPS
A couple of weeks ago a friend told me that someone she knew had their car broken into while they were at a football match. Their car was parked on the green which was adjacent to the football stadium and specially allotted to football fans. Things stolen from the car included a garage door remote control, some money and a GPS which had been prominently mounted on the dashboard..

When the victims got home, they found that their house had been ransacked and just about everything worth anything had been stolen.

The thieves had used the GPS to guide them to the house. They then used the garage remote control to open the garage door and gain entry to the house. The thieves knew the owners were at the football game, they knew what time the game was scheduled to finish and so they knew how much time they had to clean up the house. It would appear that they had brought a truck to empty the house of its contents.


From Lazy Lightning:

The first is a complaint out of Burnsville about someone receiving stolen property...

“The Officer plugged the GPS unit into his vehicle and determined where the “home†location was for the unit. The Officer contacted an individual listed to that location and determined that an individual who resides there has the same make and model GPS unit. The passenger got picked up by his ride and the suspect vehicle was inventoried and towed."

2 comments:

boringsahm said...

We haven't purchased a GPS for the main reason that "She Says" mentions as this actually occurred to a friend of ours. I'm using the google gps map on my iphone, seems accurate enough and doesn't save data. But in saying that, I was told to remove any home contact details from my address book too as it helps thieves back to the home, what if my purse was stolen, they have access to my address on my drivers license - what to do? Just don't leave the GPS in the car!

Anonymous said...

I'm just as happy to use my handheld GPS that I use for caching (or the iPhone in a pinch) to do my autorouting for me. It keeps it in my pocket and out of the car.

Thanks for the link, much appreciated :-)