House alarm systems, burglary
Stealing Identity and Valuables: 22 Ways to Thwart Home Burglars
Identity theft doesn’t only involve computers, email, and credit cards; it can happen old-fashioned way with someone breaking into your home.
Identity thieves are not the only kind of burglar you need to worry about.
There is the casual burglar, the opportunist who sees an opening and takes it;
The “professional” burglar who wants your stuff and might spend days casing your house to determine how many people live there and the times when the house is empty; and
The home invader is looking for trouble, murder, and mayhem. (By the way, the casual burglar and the professional burglar hate confrontations. They want to take the money and run.)
So, how do you protect yourself from burglars and the identity theft that could follow?
Get a dog, even a small one that barks, will work, but a German Sheppard works better. A professional burglar we interviewed said that a dog in the house would discourage him from entering the home, even a home he has spent days casing. He said that dogs are unpredictable in these situations, and they cannot be scared off by pulling a gun on them. There was a situation in New York City some years ago when an apartment dweller came home to find his German Sheppard and a burglar dead in the entry. The way the police pieced it together, the burglar broke in, saw the dog as it was lunging, shot it through the head, but somehow the message to the dog that it was dead did not sink in until it had killed the burglar. So much for guns with a dog.
Yes, to Home Alarm System
Get a good alarm system in the house, but remember, the alarm system can be compromised rather quickly by most pros. Get a system that sends a wireless signal so that the telephone lines cannot simply be cut.
Get a surveillance camera for outside your house, the kind that you can monitor on your iPhone. Monitor the comings and goings. Install a hidden camera inside the entryway of your home. It is one of those after-the-fact protection techniques, but if someone has stolen values and papers from your home, perhaps the police the catch him before he has a chance to do further damage to you.
Make friends with your neighbors and help each other out, letting them know when you come and go and helping them when they come and go. If you become neighborhood or street conscious, it is amazing how quickly you come to see who is a “regular” in your neighborhood and who is not.
As for the amateurs-amateur, burglars and thieves are opportunists. If you leave your lawn sprinkler out in the front lawn, that is liable to disappear because it is easy. But for the more serious amateurs, here are several ways to thwart them.
One good way is to look at your home through the eyes of an amateur burglar. How would you go about getting into your house? Stand out in front of the house, walk around it, and figure out how you would break in, and then do something to counter that ease of access. Is there a kitchen or dining room, or a living room window at ground level around the back of your house in a secluded spot where someone could take his or her time breaking a window and climbing in? What about the door locks? Would it be easy to push them in? Could you simply break a window in the door, reach in, and unlock it? The back of your house, like the front of your house, should also have motion detector lights. Motion detector lights are smart and cheap.
Lock up your home and car, even if you go out to do a short errand. 99 out of 100 times, nothing will happen when you are briefly away from your home…but what about that 100th time?
If you are moving into a new home, change all of the lock tumblers immediately as you take possession. This, like all home security measures, goes beyond protecting against identity theft and is about the protection of you and your family.
Go wireless with security systems. The professional crooks want to snip wires and keep everything quiet in the neighborhood. There are advanced security systems on the market today that could throw a real surprise into even a pro and get the alarm ringing before he or she can stop it.
Make your house look like there is someone at home at all times.
Don’t have an alarm system that cries “wolf,” which means that if your alarm system doesn’t work right and goes off at different times, your neighbors will ignore it when it goes off for real. If you have had problems with the system, but have now fixed it, tell everyone within hearing distance that you have indeed fixed the problem and that if they should hear the alarm go off, it means trouble.
