'World’s dumbest' suspect collared in Facebook sting A suspect is languishing in jail after allegedly breaking into a house, logging into Facebook on his victim's PC, and then reportedly obligingly leaving his social network profile up and open for the returning homeowner. Police mugshot of Nicholas Wig Wig's profile pic from his police department presence Arresting officers …
> Next time I burgle a house, at least I'm going to leave someone else's FB profile open...
That would be foolish in the UK at least, you could easily be looking at a year or more inside for unauthorised access to someone's facebook account under the 1990 Computer Misuse Act. If you confessed to the burglary you'd likely get a non-custodial sentence.
Frankly, the vast majority of crims who do burglaries and these kinds of crimes (fraud, theft from employer), are pretty bloody thick. That's (often) why they're crims rather than gainfully employed.
I worked doing IT for the plod at one point, and the ridiculous stupidity that the low-level crooks came up with was mind-boggling. My favourite was when a call came in about the 2 gents all in black with balaclavas who were spotted carrying a ladder into a suburban back yard... at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Lovely sunny day it was, too.
Hence the US prison population crisis.
"While rates of violent crimes has fallen by 25 percent over the last 20 years, prison population has tripled. Overall, the U.S. imprisons more people than any other nation. Second is China, with 1.5 million people in behind bars.
While there appears a public need to make sure people are punished for crimes, the financial cost to incarcerate are staggering. Morenoff estimates that it costs $25,000-$30,000 per year (in public money) to incarcerate each prisoner. That cost increases significantly with older prisoners and those who need medical care.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news126279826.html#jCp"
Also:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/08/economist-explains-8
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate
So, locking crims up in greater numbers led to a drop in crime and you consider that not a success? Part of sentencing is the deterrent message to other crims - don't do the crime because you will do lots of time. Your lovely calculation of the cost of locking them up needs to be compared to the cost of policing, insurance costs, lost business and harm to citizens the same crims might do if released earlier, all of which could outweigh the figures you mentioned.
Nothing strange heret. Our home PC has an admin user which is password protected and the user accounts which aren't. We don't have anything to hide from each other so passwords on user accounts is not necessary. However, what's in the admin account stays in the admin account.
All the time. And I need a separate password for the administrator account whenever something needs to make changes, since all user accounts run as just that. You do work in IT don't you? Basic security and all that...
Another good reason to use separate login accounts is that everyone then gets their own desktops, Favourites, and My Documents areas. And they can leave themselves logged in with stuff open, and a simple Switch User allows someone else to use the machine without disturbing anything.
You do work in IT don't you? Basic security and all that...
Actually following up on my comment, I earlier found a colleague of mine logs in to his desktop computer using his admin account 'cos "it's easier to run all the server consoles that way". Basic security and all that... ;-)
Perhaps you may want to increase your education of your family to safe online practices.
My wife and children have all got password protected profiles, separate email accounts and they utilise different passwords for their web services as well, (gaming websites, online shopping and the like)
My youngest has done this since the age of 4 with a password of cat.
If something bad, or weird happens they are educated to come and get an adult.
I know their passwords so I can help them and fix things if they go wrong.
They know I could use it to check up on them, but the trust is still there and I wouldn't do that as I have other methods that transcend their passwords.
( I spotted my youngest searching for youtube videos of how to sex girls and big boobs)
"I've educated my child to respect my belongings and those of other people.
In return, I respect her belongings and don't go moseying through her mail.
We don't need passwords in my family."
It is about containing the damage. A machine with, let's say, 3 users: One admin (with password) and two regulars.
The admin is (should be) safe from the compromise of one of the other two users. But, without passwords on the regulars, one could affect the other.
A big problem, to open your user and find everything encrypted, due to the other visit's to a bogus site...
Yes, my machine is password protected. Yes, my wife knows my password. Why not? I'm not keeping something from her - and it comes in handy, at times.
quote: "Do you seriously log into your home computer with a username and password each time you use it?
Must be something on it you don't want your mother to see...;-)"
I'd make the analogy to your front door in the house, or possibly your car door(s). I'm guessing that you lock those regularly, rather than just leave them unlocked for convenience? Why would you also not lock your computer?
I type a password in to my PC every time, and it takes approximately the same amount of time as fishing my house (or car) keys out of my pocket. It is secured with a password for exactly the same reasons my house and car are secured with keys; namely to keep out unauthorised users (aka burglars or joyriders).
Please tell me you also have "remember my password" ticked for your personal email / online banking logins on this PC that does not have a password set? That would be pretty classic if it were the case :D
Is anyone else living in the same house? If not then a password adds very little security compared to the locks on the doors. What it would add would be pointless in the event of the PC being stolen if the hard drive wasn't also encrypted to prevent it simply being added as a second data drive to another machine.
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"Why didn't he knick the PC?" He probably didn't know enough about it. In the UK, a group of criminals knocked out a security guard and broke into a datacenter in London. Ignoring the racks and racks of expensive servers and storage, they stole three PC keyboards....
I had a similar break-in to one of my company's offices where the burglars broke into an archives room and stole a couple of old Pentium 4 machines rather than the dozen file-boxes stamped with 'Secret - Proprietary' containing our most the company's most guarded secrets (The storage facility they were supposed to suffered a fire, and were there temporarily while the facility was being repaired). Good thing criminals are stupid (if they weren't they'd be security consultants)...
"Why didn't he knick the PC?"
We had our house burgled some years ago and at the time the police constable said that, contrary to popular belief, many thieves don't knick things like computers and tellies because they are too conspicuous. Instead, they prefer things they can just put in their pocket and walk off with (in our case cash and jewellery).
I guess heists involving electronic appliances would require more organisation like a van and some plausible cover for why it's parked in the driveway. It's unlikely that this guy would even be able to grasp the concept let alone organise the deed!
Word of warning re on-site backups & making assumptions.
A co-worker had his house broken into. Thieves did nick his computer. And his backup NAS.
All his digital memories down the drain. With a new baby too boot.
My guess is an old laptop may get overlooked, but maybe not a newer one. And if you don't encrypt your important files, you may even experience the pleasure of ID theft, on the off chance the thieves are bright enough to take advantage of that.
Not things insurance will cover.
I'm suddenly reassured by the fact that all the IT gear in my house is old, dusty, and crappy looking.
As someone else pointed out, above, our experience of burglary was also of the "force the front door, grab the nearest available, easily carried, item, and leave". In our case, they took my wife's handbag (later retreived from a bin at the end of the road) and a set of car keys (which we'd got back from the garage the same afternoon, and so had the Make, Model and Reg No. on an attached tag), but they didn't take the car. Police response didn't go beyond "yeah, probably crackheads looking for an easy fence for their next score. Get a better front door." CSI it was not.
When I read something like this I wonder can it really be true?... Alternate, more terrifying take on this story....The man in question wasn't really a crim, he just witnessed something he shouldn't have... So we had to rapidly 'reframe' the situation...
/Your friendly regional NSA officer
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