He’s Making a List, He’s Checking it Twice…

It’s officially that time of year again! Christmas wish lists are written with all the excitement of a child awaiting Santa’s swift arrival on Christmas Eve night and curated with the utmost care and consideration. Soon people will take to TikTok and YouTube to showcase their new prized possessions, a subtle brag with overall good intentions… most of the time. Christmas tunes are all around, and you know how the song goes, “He’s Making a List, He’s Checking it Twice…” 

What if I told you the “He” in question wasn’t Santa, but an intruder, a greedy and selfish individual with your wish list on his mind. Robberies have been up 30% in the Los Angeles area over the last three years, but people all over the country and the world should follow a few simple steps to prevent theft and robbery this Christmas season. The rise in openness and our tendency to overshare the many details of our lives with our subscribers or followers in the virtual community has made the robber’s job easier than ever. 

By visiting your page and watching just a few of your videos, they’ll know the kind of furniture you own, the jewelry, the clothing, the technology and more. It may seem perfectly innocent to post a video packing for your next trip, but if you share the dates you’ll be gone to the entire world, you just marked yourself as a perfect victim for a home robbery to occur in your empty house. 

My eyes were open to this reality when one of my favorite influencers, Victoria Paris, had her house broken into and her belongings stolen while she was away on vacation. She built her career as a video blogger who shares her travels, fashion and lifestyle content with her hundreds of thousands of followers. It wasn’t out of the norm for her to be documenting her trip to Europe. In fact, I’m sure the views and engagement on those videos were fantastic as many wish to live vicariously through her clips of the dazzling views, delectable food, divine fashion, and incredible hotels. But to someone back in California, this meant an empty house with all the luxury gifts and merchandise brands have sent for Paris to promote, right in their grasp. Although she had a security system in place, the offender paid it no mind when he broke in and stole a variety of valuable and even irreplaceable items. 

Since then, she has used her platform to educate others about the dark reality that comes with sharing so much of your life online and steps to stay safe. No one thinks it’ll happen to them until it does. We’re taught to lock our doors and pay for high-tech security systems, but in this generation, it isn’t enough when there’s another whole world to protect ourselves from, with people who we can’t see, but are watching us. 

Even though you’re excited to share your gifts with the world, maybe think twice about the message you’re putting out there along with the valuable items you put at risk because the wrong person may just find a way to take them from you. Believe it or not, there’s many ways to find out where you are through the videos you post and it’s certainly not impossible to locate the address of someone you envy online, as we saw in the case of Victoria Paris’ home robbery. 

My word of advice, if you’re away traveling for the holiday season, is this — don’t post the content of your trip until after you’re back, and if there’s a haul you’re planning to post, don’t 

forget who’s making a list of your items that they covet and checking it twice when they come to collect. 

I don’t say this to scare you, my reader, but to make sure you’re informed on the dangers at play when you’re too open with personal information of any kind on the internet. 

You wouldn’t tell a random stranger you were going out of town and leaving your designer bags or flat screen TV at home, so please, take the time to think before you post this holiday season!