Police are increasingly using social media in increasing ways to investigate crimes, State College, Pa. Police Officer Kelly Aston said.

Aston said the police use social media frequently, mostly to find people in burglary and theft cases.

“Our law enforcement officers have to keep up with what the public is doing,” she said. “As they change, we have to change with them. As technology advances we have to advance.”

But she said the police have also recently used social media to make arrests in connection with the Nov. 9 riot downtown following the Board of Trustees’ decision to remove former Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno and Graham Spanier. In that case, Aston said police used pictures and videos of the riots to charge people.

Aston said police are now trained in social media because of how frequently it is used. She said sometimes police officers have to go a step beyond just finding posts; they must then ask the social media sites to preserve the data.

PSU Police Chief Tyrone Parham said a group that was created for people who rushed the field after a football game against Ohio State was one example of how Facebook posts led to arrests.

Police used this group to find names of people who entered the field, which led them too make arrests, Parham said.

He also said University Police typically use Facebook sites to match a name to a picture.

Police also use social media to catch people who are involved in drug-related crimes, Aston said.

She said it is not uncommon for people to post about their drug use or sales.

“Surprisingly, they put some really obvious statements on their social media sites about criminal activity,” Aston said.

But social media can also get people into other kinds of trouble — as experts are warning people to think twice before tweeting or posting on Facebook about their vacations, if they want to return to find all of their belongings where they left them.

At Penn State, Parham said this has not been a huge problem on campus.

Penn State Professor S. Shyam Sundar, who is listed as an expert in social media and its effects, said that there are ways to connect a person’s information online.

For example, Sundar said there are websites that can connect someone’s tweets, Facebook posts and Foursquare check-ins to figure out someone’s exact location and to learn when someone’s residence is unoccupied. Still, Sundar said these risks haven’t prevented many from posting location information online.