Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro is ad­vis­ing cit­i­zens to pay care­ful at­ten­tion to how they dis­pose of their garbage, as they may un­sus­pect­ing­ly be fa­cil­i­tat­ing the easy trans­fer of per­son­al and fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion to crim­i­nals.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day about the mo­tives be­hind re­cent kid­nap­pings, he said, “It is not on­ly the of­fi­cial garbage col­lec­tors who have an in­ter­est in what you throw out, so shred your fi­nan­cial state­ments be­fore plac­ing them in that garbage bag.”

He al­so warned the pub­lic against the dan­gers of post­ing too much on so­cial me­dia.

“There is al­so the ex­ploita­tion of weak dig­i­tal se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols, al­low­ing per­sons to ex­tract per­son­al in­for­ma­tion, so per­sons may see their Face­book, What­sApp, and oth­er ac­counts be­ing hacked, and you don’t know what is the hid­den in­tent be­hind that,” he said.

Con­firm­ing that re­cent kid­nap­pings were di­rect­ly linked to the crim­i­nal syn­di­cate whose ac­tiv­i­ties led to the de­c­la­ra­tion of the State of Emer­gency (SoE) on Ju­ly 18, he claimed ab­duc­tions were used as a “means of them get­ting fi­nan­cial re­wards out of their il­lic­it acts.”

And while he is thank­ful the core threat has been neu­tralised, he con­firmed, “Resid­ual cells are still be­ing ac­tive­ly pur­sued at this time.”

He said those cells may be re­spon­si­ble for re­cent kid­nap­pings.

The top cop stressed the im­por­tance of keep­ing per­son­al in­for­ma­tion pri­vate.

He said word of mouth in­tel­li­gence with­in com­mu­ni­ties and fam­i­lies was just as dan­ger­ous, as it was some­times done, “through co­erced or com­plic­it in­ter­me­di­aries, who would share in­for­ma­tion to oth­er per­sons with­out be­ing aware that the in­for­ma­tion they are shar­ing is detri­men­tal to per­sons in their in­ner cir­cle.”

Re­fer­ring to the on­go­ing SoE, which was pred­i­cat­ed on in­tel­li­gence that crim­i­nals were us­ing spe­cif­ic crimes such as rob­beries, ex­tor­tions, home in­va­sions and kid­nap­pings to fund their il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties, Gue­var­ro re­vealed, “In­tel­li­gence sug­gests vic­tims are not ran­dom­ly cho­sen, but rather or­gan­ised crim­i­nal groups are strate­gi­cal­ly se­lect­ing in­di­vid­u­als based on per­ceived fi­nan­cial vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and vis­i­bil­i­ty.”

He said vic­tims were be­ing se­lect­ed by “crim­i­nals us­ing a mix of dig­i­tal pro­fil­ing, hu­man in­tel­li­gence, il­lic­it da­ta ex­change and col­lec­tion to as­sess a fam­i­ly’s ran­som pay­ing po­ten­tial.”

The CoP point­ed out that crim­i­nal el­e­ments were “mon­i­tor­ing so­cial me­dia for signs of af­flu­ence, trav­el pat­terns and as­set dis­play,” as well as sift­ing through leaked or im­prop­er­ly stored fi­nan­cial da­ta from busi­ness­es and in­sti­tu­tions.

“In most cas­es, vic­tims had been un­der sur­veil­lance or ob­ser­va­tion for weeks be­fore their ab­duc­tion, so I would urge per­sons to cease ex­pos­ing their lifestyles on so­cial me­dia, to pay at­ten­tion to the per­sons with­in your in­ner cir­cle with whom you share in­ti­mate in­for­ma­tion with, and most im­por­tant­ly, pay at­ten­tion to your sur­round­ings and stag­ger your routes and pre­dictable dai­ly move­ments.”

He praised law­men for their ef­forts in re­duc­ing crime.

“Since the SoE be­gan, ac­tion­able in­tel­li­gence has led to res­cues, dis­man­tling of com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­works with­in the syn­di­cate and the re­lo­ca­tion of key in­mates to high­er se­cu­ri­ty zones.”