In a somewhat similar vein, a few years back my wife got in to the whole Couchsurfing thing - which could be said to be a forerunner of AirBnB.

A nice couple from the other side of the world stayed with us for the weekend. When they left I noticed they had taken six Intermec Windows CE warehouse scanners with them. I'd been working from home for a bit so that why I had them, I was updating the software to work with our new ERP system.

They were backpacking so I'm not too sure what they planned to do with them. These devices are hard to hide and they didn't take the charging cradles.

I had to pay to replace them out of my own pocket as our home insurance wouldn't cover work owned items.

Was it too late to chase them down?

I only noticed after they had left the country. I did go to the Guards (Irish police), but they confirmed what I thought that because they were now out of the country then there wasn't a lot that could be done.

We also reported them to Couchsurfing who seemed completely disinterested.

Though this is only tangentially related - door locks with digital codes really need to be the standard. I live in NYC and have never seen this here. Meanwhile, in South Korea digital code locks seem to be the standard.

Copying a key takes 2 seconds and costs less than a dollar. Giving your keys to someone is a huge security risk.

Many of us don't routinely give out keys to people we don't have some sort of ongoing relationship with (whether personal or professional) so "really need to be the standard" seems rather strong. That said, if I were renting out a property or otherwise had a lot of different people who needed access, I would definitely install door locks with digital codes. (I actually have a keypad for my garage door but it would be a nuisance to reset.)

Maybe you don't give them copies of your keys, but, don't your friends even run down to grab a food delivery or something when they're at your place? Or run down to the store in front with your key, etc?

No. I live in a house in a semi-rural area that doesn't even have any food delivery options :-)

I recently stayed at an AirBnB. The host used a keybox that was next to the main entrance of the property which had the key to the house and shared a code with me, so that when I get to the property I can use the code to get the key. The problem I saw with this is that the code was extremely weak. And I suspect, based on the the nature of the code, that the host perhaps doesn't change the code for each guest. I hope they do. Just using a digital lock wont help if people use weak passcodes etc. and use bad security practices.

I mostly agree with you. But let's be fair about the process for getting a key copied:

1. Wander around the store finding someone who looks like they know how to copy a key

2. Follow them awkwardly while they finish helping someone else

3. Watch them wander through all the key templates to find the right one.

4. 20 seconds into the first attempt he notices a deformity and starts over.

5. 11 seconds into the second attempt, the key catches and goes soaring majestically across the store.

6. 53 seconds into the third attempt you finally have your key.

7. Discover you forgot your wallet.

Still a bigger security risk than having digital lock doors.

My local grocer has a self-service machine that will copy a key in a minute or two.

All the big and small box hardware stores around here have self service ones, I thin kit's $6 for 4 keys

I actually got my keys copied last night and the whole process took 30-60 seconds.

Technology is always cool until the idiots and criminals figure out how to use it...

AirBnB must hate this type of news. It undermines the trust that is essential to bring "sellers" to their marketplace.

Not necessarily. From my personal experience more Airbnb hosts are renting out places that aren't their primary residences, so there's nothing of value in the apartment (as mentioned in the article).

That's a surprisingly helpful blog post from the police department. Very practical tips that will keep you safe from 98% of this kind of trouble.

I'm surprised the police followed through with the information from the victim. I went through the same after being burglarized and I couldn't do anything because the detectives didn't care and/or were unreachable. This was in Houston though.

I wonder if thieves build up reputation on AirBnB before burgling. I know this is reasonably easy to automate on eBay (buy many lowcost items), but it seems AirBnB's reputation system would be harder to game.

I had a new AirBnB account (0 reviews) and booked 3 places in advance and had 0 issues. Hosts are just glad to take someone's money most of the time, and aren't very picky.

I don't think they'll need to game the system with fake reviews for a long time.

I guess AirBnB will go the way of ebay: First thought to be for normal people to make their excess stuff to money, now a platform for big sellers.

"If you must leave these items at home, lock them in a safe that is secured to the floor of your home. Please remember that whatever is left at your home may be stolen, even if it is in a safe or hidden in a place you think nobody will ever find."

This is odd advice. Essentially: "lock your stuff up in a safe but that's likely not sufficient."

In fact, it's absolutely not sufficient because safes are rated based on how long it takes to get into them. If the thief is renting out a place which has the safe they'll get into it, especially since most people following the advice to lock their stuff up in a safe are likely not going to purchase anything stronger than a consumer grade safe, all of which tend to be fairly trivial to break into either covertly or through brute force given sufficient time.

The better advice would be to not leave anything of value, period. A safe isn't going to save your stuff.

Did you read the article? It's a police blog - and has a list of things to consider doing when letting a place on AirBnB et al. Doesn't at all appear to be what you think it is. Certainly not just a 'new article'.

Surprising amounts of downvotes (at least 5!), especially considering I was just trying to provide another point of view when ciaranm was straight up accusing fredley of not reading the article.

That's why I don't see the point for this article to be on HN. Mah...

Burglarize and burgles are synonyms, the correction is unneeded.

fredley looks to be from the UK, where we say "burgle" and nobody says "burglarize". Since the article is in a US publication, the use burglarize is fine, but it probably looks strange to non-USians.

Also from the UK. Here the word 'burglarize' actually sounds quite ridiculous, like a word made up for comedy effect. Indeed, my wife just burst out laughing when I told her about 'burglarize', which she'd never heard before.

Just checked the OED -- the first citation for "burglarize" is 1871, and the first citation for "burgle" is 1872. Looks like "burgle" was a back-formation from burglar corresponding to the "burgulare" of legal latin.

...and that's how 'burgle' sounds to me (US)

This is what I think of whenever I hear "burgle": https://youtu.be/jN7buzYdGZ4?t=39s

No burghul jokes yet?

A burglar burgled burghul and burghul burgled by a burglar

Say it three times without fumbling, you'd get a free tasty bowl of burghul.[1]

[1]: http://media.rd.com/rd/images/rdc/books/cut-your-cholesterol...

This is how Americans feel about, for example, "wheelie bin".

Or British people saying they're "knackered".

That's exactly what I thought too, I first heard the word in an Offspring song:

That car looked so tempting, so easy to drive / Just like that apartment that you burglarized

I thought the songwriter had invented the word to make the rhyming work. I couldn't believe it the first time I saw it in a serious context.

I normally find it pretty tiresome when Brits get all snooty about Americanisms (getting rid of all those redundant 'u's was a good idea!). But "burglarized" just sounds ridiculous.

Have to agree (I'm in the UK too); horrible word.

Could be worse - at least we weren't told that the person cancellized the accommodation they'd previously reservized on AirBnB.

From the US, but I agree.

It's part of the "police bureaucratic mentality" to Latinize and inflate common concepts to make them sound more important (to uneducated ears, at least).

My favorite one is always "rate of speed." It gets used everywhere in policing, apparently, but it's completely ridiculous. The whole basis of the concept of "speed" is that it's a rate!

Thanks for the constructive criticism, gents. Cheerio!

I'm from the US and it still sounds silly.

Americans - You can do a similar structure with any word that has noun/verb forms if you want to imagine how dumb we sound to other English speakers.

"Sure was exciting to watch Phelps swimmerize that last race!"

Be sure to sodomize him upon his return.

A burglar burglarizes, i.e. commits the act of burglary.

A sodomist sodomizes, i.e. commits the act of sodomy.

I'm sure there are other examples.

The "ize" suffix generally means "make something more X." Americanize, tenderize, civilize, legalize, etc.

Following that pattern, I guess to burglarize something is to make it more burglared, rather than just the act of burgling it.

It's a strange linguistic distinction to make. Take a house that's not burgled and make it burgled. Why we talk about it that way instead of just using the normal verb "burgled" I have no idea.

You would not, to take the example from above, say that Michael Phelps had made a race more swum. You'd just say he swam it.

>The "ize" suffix generally means "make something more X." Americanize, tenderize, civilize, legalize, etc.

No it doesn't, the sense of increasing a preexisting quality is not what -ize does. It just makes verbs.

To fossilize isn't to make more like a fossil; dinosaurs were alive in the beginning.

To agonize is to experience and exhibit agony.

To hospitalize isn't to make someone more so in a hospital, but to put them there in the first place.

"burgle" isn't the normal verb, both "burgle" and "burglarize" emerged at about the same point. Two different ways of turning an old noun "burglar" into a verb.

> No it doesn't, the sense of increasing a preexisting quality is not what -ize does. It just makes verbs.

I didn't mean to imply that it started with some non-zero amount, but I thought "make something X" wasn't as clear. At any rate, I think it's fair to say that something fossilized is more like a fossil than it was before it got fossilized.

> "burgle" isn't the normal verb, both "burgle" and "burglarize" emerged at about the same point. Two different ways of turning an old noun "burglar" into a verb.

One of those ways matches the pattern used for any profession word ending in "er" or "or" (swimmer, actor, etc). The other is a silly exception in a language that already has plenty. All I'm saying is that every other English speaking country did it the sensible way, and I like that way better.

I've never heard anybody say "beggarized", so at least we did the sane thing with that one.

I think your core confusion is assuming burglar is a verb + er as in "burglar is one who does burgle", but it isn't.

-er comes to English from germanic languages

Burglar is a loan word from French, directly. It doesn't use -er/-ar/-or. It might seem like that... and that's why "burgle" was created, but "burgle" isn't the "normal" word, it was created to follow a common pattern in English, but -ize is just as valid and is very old.

It's no silly exception, it's just how words are used.

No one would say beggarized, because beg is already the root word. "burgle" wasn't already a root word. It seems like it might have been but it wasn't.

Maybe I should just learn Esperanto or some other more consistent language...

> It's a strange linguistic distinction to make.

English is a collection of strange linguistic distinctions.

Following the pattern of compatible/incompatible, I might be surprised by the meanings of flammable and inflammable.

No Burglarize and burglar came before burgled.