Google Earth Pool-Crashing Parties Latest Teen Craze
Tech savvy UK teens are using Google Earth’s aerial shots to create the latest summertime craze – pool crashing. The Register Hardware site confirmed several pool trespassing cases with local UK police.
Google Earth is used to locate suitable pools and then Facebook is used to organize the pool crash parties.
Teens begin by surfing Google Earth’s satellite images to find houses with swimming pools. Once a target has been identified, teens then use Facebook to arrange an organized, but uninvited, pool-crash.
A spokesman for Devon and Cornwall Police has already told the Daily Mail that owners of swimming pools should be on their guard. The spokesman reminded any readers planning to google for swimming pools on Google Earth that “using someone else’s pool is trespassing and therefore illegal”.
Owners of several upscale poolside properties have already returned home to find teenagers “taking a dip in their man-made lakes or their spoor: beer cans, dog-ends and vomit floating atop their once crystal-clear pools,” according to RegHardware.com.
Mobile phones, of course, seem to be an invaluable tool for a good pool-crash. Apparently, mobile numbers were doled out on Facebook for the organizers of one such event held earlier this week between midnight and 3am – the late hour because, well, it was a school night.