Paul Gorton warns about holiday posts after burglary at Cheshire home

Paul Gorton, a contestant on The Traitors, has urged people to think carefully about sharing holiday photos while away after his Cheshire home was burgled during a family trip. He told the BBC that he posted an update from beside a pool about 20 minutes before the break-in. Whether the post played any part in the crime remains unknown.

The burglary took place on 28 August, according to BBC North West reporter Lauren Hirst’s account published on 27 September. Gorton said he discovered it after returning home with his wife, Kate, and their two children. Cheshire Police said its investigation was ongoing and no arrests had been made at the time of the BBC report.

What Gorton said happened

Gorton told the BBC he posted at 21:10 BST that he and Kate were by the pool, had eaten and that the children were in bed. About 20 minutes later, he said, someone broke into their home. The timing has made him suspect that the intruder could have seen his post, but the BBC account does not establish how the home was selected.

A bike and several sentimental possessions were stolen, Gorton said, including a ring that had belonged to Kate’s grandmother. The BBC reported that the intruder entered through rear bi-fold doors by snapping a lock and then cut the broadband connection. Those details describe the reported break-in; they do not identify who carried it out.

His advice to other holidaymakers is to consider sharing pictures after getting home. ‘I think the key message is for people to be a little bit smarter, more conscientious when they're posting and post when they're back at home,’ he told the BBC. He also pointed to locks, alarms and lights as part of thinking about home security.

What the online safety exercise found

After the burglary, Gorton joined a campaign with Compare the Market. The company commissioned a licensed private investigator to examine the publicly available digital footprints of nine volunteers, the BBC reported. Its online safety experiment, published in August, says the investigator used open-source information and Instagram profiles to look for home addresses, occupancy clues and property details.

Compare the Market says the investigator identified seven of the nine volunteers’ home addresses. Four of the nine had private Instagram profiles, the company says. It reports that one volunteer’s home was confirmed vacant during a holiday and that floor plans were found for four homes. These are findings from the volunteers in the exercise, rather than evidence about how Gorton’s home was targeted.

The company says the quickest address identification took 15 minutes and the longest took 18 hours. The fastest first lead came in 50 seconds; the slowest took six hours. The distinction matters: finding an initial clue is different from identifying an address, and neither result establishes that a burglar used social media in this case.

Compare the Market also cites a Censuswide survey of 3,000 UK adults conducted from 3 to 9 July. It says 41% shared holiday updates before or during a trip, 14% waited until returning and 39% did not post about holidays. Among respondents who did post holiday updates, 22% said they rarely or never considered the home-security implications; 78% said they did.

The volunteer exercise shows what one investigator could find about a small group using available information. It did not measure burglary outcomes or establish that posting holiday pictures causes break-ins. Gorton’s suspicion about his own case therefore remains separate from the company’s findings about what personal details can be discovered online.

Advice for homes left empty

Cheshire Constabulary’s home-security checklist advises people who post while away to make sure their social media posts are visible only to friends, rather than to the public. It also recommends putting lights and a radio on timers, asking a trusted neighbour to keep an eye on the property, and cancelling newspaper and milk deliveries during a trip. The checklist is general guidance and does not establish what happened at Gorton’s home.