Traitors star Paul Gorton burgled after posting holiday snaps: 'They saw I was away'

A contestant on the second series of The Traitors has revealed how a family holiday turned into a burglary at his Cheshire home, allegedly after social media posts revealed he was away. Paul Gorton, originally from St Helens, said his house was broken into on 28 August while he, his wife Kate and their two young children were abroad.

Gorton, who appeared on the BBC competition series, described the moment he realised his home had been targeted. At 21:10 BST, he posted a picture of himself and Kate beside a swimming pool, with the children already in bed, captioning it as a quiet moment of their break. Around 20 minutes later, he says, burglars were inside the property.

The intruders forced their way through the bi-fold doors at the back of the house, using a technique known as lock snapping — a method in which a tool is inserted into the cylinder and the pins inside are levered out, allowing the lock to be opened without a key and leaving the door frame largely undamaged. The lock on the doors was punched out, leaving a visible circular hole. The burglars then cut the home's broadband connection, a detail Gorton believes was done to make the property appear unoccupied and to slow any alarm or monitoring system that might rely on a network connection.

Items taken included a bicycle and several pieces of jewellery and keepsakes with sentimental value, among them an irreplaceable ring belonging to Kate's grandmother. Gorton said the loss of the ring was among the things that hurt most.

After reporting the theft, Gorton was told by Cheshire Police that the incident looked like a "one-off hit" rather than part of a wider spree. He says officers explained that officers normally deal with offenders who travel "from far and wide" and may target a small number of homes in a single night — something he argues does not match what happened at his house. That pattern, he says, points instead to someone who had singled out his property deliberately.

"This makes me suspect that it could be someone that follows me," Gorton said. "They've seen that I've posted that I was away and then thought 'let's go in the house and see if we can get ourselves some goodies'."

The Traitors contestant has turned the experience into a warning for others. Speaking about the campaign he has joined with Compare the Market, he urged holidaymakers to delay posting images until they are back home, and to think more carefully about what their photographs and status updates reveal.

"It's not just about social media," he added. "I've learned to think about the whole picture with locks, alarms, lights, what you're posting online and whether you're accidentally advertising that nobody's home."

The research commissioned by the comparison site appears to support his wider point. A licensed private investigator was tasked with examining the publicly available digital footprints of nine volunteers. Using publicly accessible information alone, the investigator was able to identify seven of the participants' home addresses. The first lead came in just 50 seconds, and the quickest address was uncovered in 15 minutes.

Those findings underline how a single photograph, check-in, tagged location or public event detail can be enough to connect an online profile to a physical address. Holiday uploads are particularly valuable to offenders because they typically confirm simultaneously that a house is unoccupied, and for how long.

Cheshire Police confirmed to the BBC that investigations into the burglary were ongoing, but that no arrests had been made.

Gorton said he hoped others could learn from what happened, adding that the worst thing to come out of the episode could end up being the most useful lesson for others if it prompted them to better protect their homes. He urged people to be "a little bit smarter, more conscientious" about what they share, and to post once they are home.

The case has also drawn attention to a broader security debate: whether responsibility for an empty home during a holiday rests with the occupier alone, or whether the technology used to share moments of a break online should come with stronger, automatic protections for the people in them. For Gorton, the answer is personal and practical — think before posting, and consider the locks, alarms, lighting and online habits that signal an empty house.