A burglary suspect was arrested last week on charges of using the geographic coordinates of photos from Instagram and Facebook to find female students and then break into their homes and steal their underwear.
Do you like posting public photos of yourself on social media? Then listen to this: The Fullerton, California, Police Department announced yesterday that 44-year-old Arturo Galvan is the likely perpetrator behind six burglaries dating back to October 2015 that claimed the lives of 24 women.
Police say Galvan would find women online who were sharing photos publicly on Instagram and Facebook. He would then find the GPS coordinates in the photo tags, plot those coordinates on a map, and use the location data to locate the homes where the subjects of the photos lived.
Galvan then broke into homes, often with women inside, and stole women's underwear and sometimes some valuables.
Galvan was arrested last Thursday after a three-hour manhunt in a Fullerton neighborhood. He faces charges of theft, receiving proceeds of crime and voyeurism.
Fullerton PD states – and we completely agree with this – that the above news story is a cautionary tale about the shared, public use of photos, and warns the public to check their privacy data as well as the tags of photos referenced in the location and posted online.
