Health & Fitness
Safety at Home and On the Web: Precautions for the Holidays
How do you keep your neighborhood safe? How do you keep your homes secure? Find answers to these troublesome questions here.
How do you keep your neighborhood safe? How do you keep your homes secure? Is there a neighborhood watch team installed in your local community? Or is it a community-led team that alternates and volunteers throughout the year?
Unfortunately, crime continues to rise in many areas of the country. Current estimates show that more than two million home-related burglaries occur every year, with the average dollar loss upwards of $2,000. That number doesn't include any costs arising from injuries sustained while protecting one's property. Many experts point to the nation's current economic troubles and dramatic rise in unemployment as leading indicators for a continued rise in the crime rate.
Urban (and suburban) theft and home burglaries are symptomatic of a lax American sense of false security. We settle into our neighborhoods and after a period, start to recognize and trust in neighbors, and see locals passing through without alarm. For neighborhoods without watch teams, it's up to homeowners themselves to protect and serve.
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And with the upcoming holiday season nearly upon us, how do home security patterns shift? Homes are left empty more often due to travels between relatives' homes, and out-of-state air travel. And other neighborhoods that are Christmas lighting attractions are prone to more scrutiny from strangers to their neighborhood as well.
Homeowners need to take responsibility to ensure their homes are safe day and night, well-protected and secure. With the holiday season coming on, home burglaries will be on the rise and crime is expected to increase. Homeowners cannot simply rely on the police because they too are understaffed and over-stretched. What's a homeowner to do?
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One way is to fight back. I'm not suggesting using guns and arms, but rather being smart homeowners and using today's tech tools to secure our premises and property as best as we can. That includes not only our physical and local possessions, but also our digital possessions. Theft has evolved from beyond just taking items form a home. Today, we have theft in the form of Internet identity theft, email theft, online banking theft and more.
If individuals are too loose with their property and personal possessions, if they allow burglars to have an easy way with break-ins, if the police take their eye off the ball this holiday season, then it's time to offer up alternatives to conventional home security.
Today, technology companies are using mobile phones, tablets and other personal devices to help homeowners remotely manage home security systems. HDliving.com reports that in today's modern home security world, homeowners can remotely manage their gate security, front and back door cameras and exterior scans via their mobile devices.
As HD Living notes, home touch screens used to be part of larger home automation systems in the past. But the crucial difference is that homeowners needed to be within the home to use the touch screen to monitor temperatures, lighting controls and security control. And the systems back then were costly to buy and maintain.
Today, homeowners run their home security services via their personal devices. Touch screen capability on these devices is helping to remotely manage home security. Using tablets and smart phones, homeowners can set up a home alarm, lighting setups and other security systems, all from remote access.
Technology is also playing a role in protecting one's identity and online possessions from cyber-thievery. With news of so-called 'denial of service attacks' more common in recent months, it's become important for email and web users.
Your online identity too is becoming more inextricably linked to separate accounts, both online and offline. Connecting Facebook accounts to other accounts is becoming a habit for Internet users, but careless oversight of these action could lead to gaps in security. To help secure one's online identity, people are increasingly using Web monitoring systems from the likes of Lifelock to help keep cyber-thieves at bay, and to provide stronger protections that your email provider or another service can provide for a secure Web presence.
Daily malware attacks and threats from spam bots plague many of us while doing our online work. And as we shift to using social networks more than emails and web browsing, the social networks themselves can exploit weakness in security and pose threats to unsuspecting users.
For the upcoming holiday season, experts like the team behind Discovery Channel's reality show 'It Takes a Thief' has helpfully offered up a number of solid home security tips for homeowners looking to protect one's valuable possessions from would-be thieves.
They write: "Homes without a home-security/alarm system have a significantly higher break-in rate, so invest in an alarm system to protect your home ... and use it. Most of us ignore the sirens of car and house alarms because they go off regularly, so make sure your house alarm is connected to the police and a central station to ensure someone will respond."
Other tips from the team include:
- If you're moving into an home that's older, and has an old alarm system, speak to the system's provider for a new upgrade. The alarm company gets a new customer and you get a better equipped security system.
- Find a security system that uses ultrasonic sensors that not only senses break-ins and movement around exterior doors and windows, but also senses movement inside your home. These are available on the market, and can be controlled remotely from your digital device. You simply have to shop around more.
- Motion sensors, sound detectors and photocells are part of certain tools that come with less expensive security systems. If your home is on a dimly lit street or a remote area, any intruder coming near your home can be warned off with motion sensors on outdoor lights, which light up at hint of movement.
- Thieves are also discouraged by other protection tools for your home, including individual window alarms. When a thief tries to break in a window, the vibration on the window sets off an alarm. Ensure that all your windows either have these vibration-sensitive contacts on them.
Using these tips throughout the upcoming holiday season can help secure your home and its premises, and help to bring a little more jolly to your season, without losing any of that precious holly.