Traitors star's Cheshire home burgled 20 minutes after he posted holiday pool photo

A contestant on the second series of The Traitors has said his home in Cheshire was broken into within about 20 minutes of him posting a photograph on social media that made clear the family was on holiday.

Paul Gorton was away with his wife, Kate, and their two young children when burglars entered the property. The family returned to find the house had been targeted, with a bicycle, a collection of sentimental items and an irreplaceable ring that had belonged to Kate's grandmother taken from inside.

Mr Gorton, who is originally from St Helens, recalled the sequence of events with some bewilderment. "The eerie bit is at 21:10 BST I posted that me and Kate were by the side of the pool, we've got full bellings [sic], the kids are in bed, we're actually having our little bit of the holiday," he said. "About 20 minutes later, little did we know, our house has been broken into."

The burglary took place on 28 August, days before the family were due back. Investigators who attended the property found that the intruders had forced their way through the bi-fold doors at the back of the house. Photographs of the damage show the lock on the door had been punched out, leaving a circular hole where the mechanism had been.

The technique used is known as lock snapping, a well-established method of defeating euro profile and multipoint locking systems without a key. It is typically carried out by snapping or manipulating the cylinder from the outside rather than by picking or forcing the door. After gaining entry, the burglars also cut the broadband connection — a detail that would have disabled any internet-connected alarm or camera system in the property, and would have prevented push notifications reaching the household's phones.

Mr Gorton said he reported the burglary to Cheshire Police, and that officers described it as a "one-off hit". He said officers told him they normally see thieves travelling from "far and wide" who call in at a handful of houses over the course of a night. His home, however, was not the product of that kind of opportunistic pattern.

"They said they normally see people come in from far and wide and they [target] a couple of houses in a night but this isn't the case," he said. "This makes me suspect that it could be someone that follows me. 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 circumstances have become the basis of a wider awareness campaign. After the burglary, Mr Gorton joined forces with Compare the Market, which commissioned a licensed private investigator to examine the publicly available digital footprints of nine volunteers. The exercise found that seven home addresses could be identified using information already in the public domain. The fastest address was traced in just 15 minutes, while the first useful lead appeared only 50 seconds into the search.

The findings underline a point security campaigners repeatedly stress: revealing that a house is unoccupied is often the single most valuable piece of information a burglar can acquire. An image showing a swimming pool, a family meal, a relaxed evening routine or a view from a specific room can confirm not only that nobody is home, but also how long they are likely to be away and whether the property is worth breaking into.

Mr Gorton's advice to others is simple but uncomfortable. He urged people to be "a little bit smarter, more conscientious" when posting, and to share holiday photographs after they have returned home rather than while they are still away. "Hopefully people can learn from my mistakes," he said. "I guess the aim is the worst thing that's happened to us could be the best thing that will happen to you because you can protect yourself moving forward and that's the whole reason behind the campaign."

However, he was quick to stress that social media is only one part of the problem. "It's not just about social media," he said. "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." That broader checklist reflects the way home security specialists advise burglars' targets to think — in layers, combining physical deterrents such as robust locks and visible alarm equipment, external lighting and maintained gates with digital discipline around what is shared and when.

The episode also highlights a specific vulnerability faced by people in the public eye. Anyone whose daily movements, family details or property surroundings are documented across a regular stream of posts offers a far richer picture to a follower than an average household does. Mr Gorton's suspicion that he was being watched online cannot be confirmed, but the speed with which his absence was signalled to the internet is precisely what the commissioned research set out to quantify.

Cheshire Police confirmed that investigations into the burglary were ongoing, but that no arrests had been made. The loss of the ring in particular remains, in practical terms, unrecoverable: it was an irreplaceable family object rather than a high-value item, and while no replacement exists, no insurance settlement could restore what it meant to his family.

Mr Gorton is now using the experience to press for greater awareness, arguing that the theft has at least delivered a lesson that money cannot buy. If the campaign leads even a handful of holidaymakers to delay their uploads until they are home, he said, then losing the ring, the bicycle and a decade of family memories will have produced something of lasting value.