Family robbed after cash photo posted to Facebook

The family of a 17-year-old girl was robbed after their daughter uploaded a photo of a cash pile to Facebook.

Two men armed with a knife and a wooden club broke into the Bundanoon home in the NSW Southern Highlands last week demanding to speak with the unnamed girl about the cash.

The girl had been helping her grandmother count her life savings in Sydney earlier in the day when she posted the photo of the undisclosed sum of cash to the social media site.

At 11.30pm, seven hours after the photo was uploaded, the men entered the girl’s family residence where she no longer lived.

The men searched the house and stole a small amount of cash. Noone was injured in the incident.

Police inspectors were unable to disclose how the girls’ family address was known.

Facebook promotes location information sharing within profiles and allows users to include address information. But even if such information was withheld, location data could be extracted from geo-tagged photographs.

The dangers of geo-tagged photos was dramatically illustrated when US helicopters located in the Middle East were destroyed after enemy soldiers extracted the data from pictures uploaded by US marines.

Anyone with information is urged to contact Bowral Police Station on 02 4862 9299 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.