Ensuring Your Home Is Secure From Intruders

Your home is an important place where you should feel safe and secure, so ensuring it remains that way is essential. Unfortunately by not having certain measures in places this can leave your home vulnerable to burglaries. So even small changes could make a positive difference. Despite lockdown measures in 2020, 58.3% of break ins occurred at night time and staggeringly 38.1% of these were during daylight hours. With the need for many to go away on holiday as soon as possible this year, you want to ensure your home is going to be safe and secure in your absence as well.  

Install a Home Alarm

Installing a home alarm is a great visual deterrent, as well as offering you peace of mind that your home is protected.

There are a few to chose from and it is important to know which one is right for you.

  • Bells-only alarms make a noise, but don’t contact anyone (such as the police or you). 
  • Dialler burglar alarms automatically dial your phone number, or that of nominated friends and family, when the alarm is triggered.
  • Smart home-security systems contact you or family members when the alarm goes off through a smartphone or tablet app.
  • A monitoring contract means you pay a company monthly or annually to take action or call the police if the alarm goes off. 

Smartphone Video Doorbell

With a plethora of security systems to choose from today, it is a lot easier to set up a video doorbell system that is linked directly to your smartphone. This allows you to instantly see who is at your door when you are busy running errands around the house or out and about. 

This would allow you to talk to the person directly through the intercom system without them knowing that you are not at home. If somebody was to approach the front of your home without ringing the doorbell, the surveillance system that is linked to the video doorbell would alert you to their presence and capture their image on camera. This would certainly be very useful at nighttime if you notice someone lurking around who should not be. 

Closing Your Blinds At Night

Ensuring you have perfect fit blinds for your windows and patio doors, not only allows natural light to flow through, but it also enables you to have some privacy at night time when the lights are on. Though you might want to show off the lovely decor in your home, at the same time you do not want complete strangers, knowing what valuable possessions you keep by having them on display for all to see. If you close your blinds at night, this will certainly prevent intruders from peering into your home when passing by.  

Motion Activated Lights

A simple but effective way to deter strangers is to install motion activated outdoor lighting. If anyone tried to surreptitiously walk up to your front door without being noticed, their motion would instantly activate the outdoor lighting, along with your security camera system which would make them visible on camera. This could certainly prove useful if you needed to report anything to the police. 

Oversharing on Social Media

When important milestones occur in your lifetime, such as purchasing your first property, of course you want to share this happy news with friends and family. But do you need to share this news with complete strangers too? There has been an increasing trend in sharing a photo of your house keys on social media for new homeowners, which could prove a security threat. It is possible that a potential thief could replicate the shape of your keys by utilising the image you have posted in your social media. 

So if you are going to provide a new home post, ensure that your keys are not completely exposed and you share this information with those that you know as opposed to publicly. 

Secure Key Box

If you have the tendency to leave a spare key for your door under the doormat or inside a plant pot, this might be glaringly obvious to an intruder. Instead you could install a secure key box in a more discreet location which only you and your loved ones will know the secret code to. This would deter strangers from stumbling across your front door key and having unwanted access to your home. 

Hide Away Valuable Items

If you have your car parked on your drive try not to leave any valuable possession on display which could be alluring to a potential burglar. It is also best if you place any bicycles away into a locked shed as it could easily be taken if you leave this unattended on your front drive. 

Keep On Top of Monthly Subscriptions

When you next go away and leave your home for an extended period of time and you have a monthly subscription that is due to arrive at home, either try and postpone the delivery whilst you are away or ask a friend or family member to collect it for you. This will prevent parcels from piling up near your front door which can look very inviting to a passer by and demonstrates that the homeowner is not currently in. 

Smart Home Lighting System

Another way you can make it appear as though you are at home when away is to install smart home lighting. As long as you are connected to the internet you would be able to control when you want your lights to turn on, which would look as though someone is at home, thus not highlighting that the property is empty at night time. 

Simplest Method of All

Most certainly the easiest method to remember, would simply be to lock your front door! Surprisingly over three quarters of burglaries occur simply because the burglars were able to access homes by entering through an unlocked front door.It is far easier to prise open an unlocked door than it is to smash open a window upon entry, so it is definitely advisable that you lock your front door at night.  

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Keep Your Home Insurance Policy Up to Date

In the event that an intruder was able to break into your home, ensuring your home insurance is all up to date will be essential. You will also need to make sure that any alarm or surveillance systems were all working accordingly and you took necessary precautions to safeguard your home, otherwise this could invalidate your claim. The more precautions you have in place, the better it is for the wellbeing of yourself, your family and your home.  

1 thought on “Ensuring Your Home Is Secure From Intruders”

  1. For all families, security is an important consideration. We want to be able to leave our home feeling that when we return everything will be as we left it. Fortunately, keeping your home secure is not difficult. Once you have installed the basic home security equipment, all you need to do is to check and maintain each item, periodically.

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