On the home break-in story however there's a lot of evidence that this hardly ever happens if it happens at all.
What evidence would/could there be? Someone sophisticated enough to be wifi sniffing HTTP calls on open networks for details of when people are travelling is unlikely to then just do a straightforward smash and grab burglary. Even just the fact they're bothering with information gathering in the first place points to a criminal who's bit cleverer than your typical housebreaker.
I'm not saying you're wrong, just questioning whether there'd be enough data points to suggest one way or the other. It could be a 'common' method of scouting places to burgle among criminals who manage to not get caught.