I have copied this from another forum i visit
Allthough this relates to fishing tackle it is worth posting

Have been contacted by a couple of Police constabularies recently with respect to burglaries and this method to obtain your address. It would appear that this technique is being used more frequently by using classified platforms such as Gumtree, Loot, Adtrader, social network sites such as facebook, some Forums and it would appear at least twice through Tackle-Trader. (Gloucester area.)

Its never a good idea to have people come round your house and look at tackle. I don’t think this really happens much nowdays as people tend to meet away from thier home addresses. So if a burgler is looking to find your address he must go about getting it via a different method. Users selling high end items whether fishing tackle, motor bikes or anything else of value will be targeted. You will get a text or call from a bloke who has a pay as you go sim card in his mobile so its not registered to anyone and therefore he can’t be traced. (The sim card will be ditched after he has burgled your house) He will offer to buy your item and you will arrange to meet him at a place away from your address. He will say he is in, for example a black escort (his obviously not in that) and you will tell him what car you are in. You will arrive at the meeting place and wait, after no one turns up you will ring the number but get no answer. After a while you will drive back home thinking you have just dealt with a time waster. What you don’t realise is is that you are being followed home. You will get home and be watched going into your house. The bloke who now knows where you live will in the next week or so burgle your house.

If you arrange to meet someone but they don’t turn up don’t just drive straigt home, be mindful that you maybe being followed by someone. Drive around the bloke a couple of times or park up for a minute. If the same car is behind you prior to you stopping or driving around the bloke a couple of times then you are probably being followed. Take the index and tell the police of what’s happened, at the very least they can make an intelligence report about the incident, they call it a CRIMINT and its used to gather inteligence.

Its never a good idea to have people come round your house and look at your tackle

I’d rather do it there than show them in a car park, you can get arrested for that kind of thing!

Thing is if someone refused to meet me at their home and I was the buyer then I’d assume they were selling dodgy stuff and walk away.

Bit of a no win situation really.

Drive around the bloke a couple of times

that’ll rile him 😉

Drive around over the bloke a couple of times

Better, shirley?

I have a bat cave style entrance/exit to my house, so I’ll be fine.

In all seriousness though, if i was buying something from someone, and they said to meet them in a lay-by or similar, then i wouldn’t buy from them.

On the street my shops on, there’s always cars parked up for sale by the same bloke (who’s blatantly a trader). They’re all in the same handwriting, but with different contact numbers. Just screams of dodgy!

i always meet folk in the village – number 1 because youd never find my house and number 2 , you meet them and can shut it down if you dont feel comfortable.

thats not how I’d do it… I’d get the sellers address, arrange to meet somewhere else and then not show up. While seller is sat in a car park waiting for me, I can go burgle their house, cos I know they’re out.

Honestly, the standard of criminals has really dropped.

whats the benefit of following me home to find where i live? surely just burgaling any house with luxuary items is loads easier than setting up false meetings and following people like cold war spies?

Maybe there’s specialist tackle thieves – just like the guys in Bristol who follow cyclists home to nick their bikes?

Why burgle random places when for a bit of extra work you know you’ll get easily portable, virtually untraceable stuff with a high value.
Modus Operandi isn’t it?

I like the idea of driving around the bloke a couple of times, proper cowboys and injuns stuff 🙂