Steal from me! Cyclist’s naive invite to thieves tracking his trips online
A CYCLING fan had his five racing bikes worth £12,500 stolen after thieves tracked down his home using routes he posted online.
Adam Jones, 51, lost five top-of-the-range bikes when robbers broke into his garage.
He believes the Strava app – widely used in the cycling and running communities for people to compare their times – led to him becoming a target.
His route times were relatively fast and the thieves worked out he was riding expensive bikes.
The PR consultant said: “After the break-in I was thinking it had to have been somebody who knows me – it felt so targeted and very personal.
“I was starting to look over my shoulder and thinking ‘who could it be?'
“But then after speaking to one of the cycling shops here the chap said ‘are you quick and are you on Strava?'.
“I had no idea that what criminals are doing is working out where people are cycling and on what routes, then using that to track where they live.
“They are making the correlation between people posting quick times and probably having the better equipment.”
The lifelong cycling enthusiast who lives with wife Tracy, 47, in Barling, near Southend, believes criminals also use social media to spot when people post pictures of expensive new bikes.
“We are inadvertently using social media as a shop window for the thieves,” he said.
“I put a gormless picture of me on Facebook with my new BMC bike.
“It's like an advert, saying ‘Come and steal me'.
“People are riding round on bikes worth six, eight, even ten thousand pounds, so it's big money for the criminals.”