Today’s world is dangerous. And it’s not just out on the streets that you need to worry about the health and safety of your family. Did you know that there are close to half a billion burglaries in the US each year? Home robberies likely mean a loss of property but can also mean that there is a real and serious threat to the well-being of your family. A well thought out family security plan can help mitigate these occasions. To make sure your family is ready, you should sit down with your kids to talk through the security plan and make sure they are ready in the event that the plan needs to be activated.

In order to make the meeting a success, you’ll want to make sure you be careful of the following

• Help them to understand how home security can affect them
• Don’t scare them
• Make the topics approachable and understandable

Once you have your game plan outlined, you should schedule a family meeting – this can be in addition to or during the regular family meeting. While there are certain points you’ll want to make sure you get across, you should also make sure that you are flexible enough with the plan that your kids can help you create the plan during the meeting. Children will be more likely to follow a plan that they’ve helped to craft. You can even turn the plan creation into a game – you can go outside and pretend to be robbers. Ask your kids where they would break into the house and how they think it would be best to protect the home from these robbers. Kids are incredibly creative and will not only come up with some fun ideas but will likely help you think about your own home security outside of the box. The point of this exercise is not to make your kids feel unsafe – but to emphasize the fact that they are safe and that you’re working hard to make sure they stay that way.

It’s important to keep an open discussion with your kids about home security. It will make them feel safer in their home and will make you feel more at ease by having well-informed and thoughtful kids.

Here at Allied Fire and Security we often go on and on about how important we think it is for you to have your home, belongings and family protected by a burglar alarm. It is one of the easiest ways to deter potential robbers from you home is simply by making them think that they could be caught. A circuit is any circle of electricity where the electricity flows along a certain path between two points of opposite charge.

When you have a burglar alarm installed by us, we create various circuits around your home – this means that any time a potential burglar opens a door or window, he will break the circuit. There are two basic types of circuit based burglar alarms – a closed circuit system and an open circuit system. In a closed circuit system, the electric circuit is closed when a door or window is shut. This means that so long as the door or window is shut the electricity will be able to flow from one end of the circuit to the other. But…if someone opens the door or window while the alarm is activated, the circuit is opened and the alarm is triggered. In an open circuit system, opening the door closes the circuit, so that electricity begins to flow. In this system, the alarm is triggered when the circuit is completed. For the most part, a closed circuit system is the smarter choice as it is more difficult to deactivate by any potential burglar.

Circuit alarms are very effective for guarding the outside of a home but don’t work as well on the inside – because there aren’t as many doors and windows to open and close on the inside. Instead, we often use motion detecting alarms on the inside of a home. These systems are fairly straightforward – a home that has been protected by a motion detector will have small detectors in the corners of their rooms. When activated, any movement within the range of the motion sensor will active the alarm.

When either the circuit is broken on the outside of the home or the motion detector has sensed something, an alarm will sound. Usually, alarms are either a siren or loud alarm noise or flashing outdoor lights; either of these is often combined with a telephone auto-dialer. The combination of these things will alert the homeowner and the police of a potential intruder and will hopefully keep your home safe from would-be robbers.

A well-informed citizen is a well-protected citizen. Have a look at these statistics and facts on home security. How many of them did you already know? What surprised you?

• There are close to half a billion burglaries that affect residents of the U.S. each year
• About 30 percent of all burglaries are through an open or unlocked window or door.
• Nearly 66 percent of all burglaries are residential break-ins.
• Homes on a corner lot are more likely to be burglarized.
• 38% of all assaults occur during a home invasion.
• 67% of all burglaries involved forcible entry.
• Renters are just as likely to be the victims of property crime as homeowners.
• Every 13 seconds a home intrusion is committed.
• If your home has had a burglary, the odds of being burglarized again dramatically increase.
• July and August most the frequent months for break-ins.
• February is the least frequent for home breaks.
• Property stolen amounts to more than $3 billion
• 52% of burglaries take place in the daytime without the cover of darkness for protection
• 2,500+ cars stolen per day… almost 2 cars a minute.
• 85% of break-ins are from non-professionals that are usually more desperate and dangerous.
• Screwdrivers, pliers, pries bars, and small hammers are most common tools used in robberies.
• Police usually only clear 13% of all reported burglaries due to lack of witnesses or physical evidence.
• Only 17% of the homes in U.S. have a security system.
• Homes without security systems are up to 300% more likely to be broken into.

I, for one, can hardly believe that so many robberies occur during daylight – it really hammers home the idea that you should always lock your doors and turn on your security system, even when you just leave the house to run errands or pick up your kids from school. It really emphasizes the fact that home security systems are an extremely important part of keeping your home, your belongings, and your family safe from harm. You can see more statistics here on this website. I

Identity theft has become a major issue in the past few years. It’s often far easier to perpetrate than a physical robbery because all it requires is some clever computer hacking or access to a mailbox with a credit card application.  Did you know that someone is over ten times more likely to have their identity stolen than their car? There are even thieves out there who install credit card number stealing devices onto ATMs. In particular, students need to be especially careful with identity theft. While they may not have quite as many resources as working adults do, identity theft can still be very damaging to the future credit-worthiness. Over 50% identity theft victims are college students – that’s 50% of a $54 billion crime industry.
There are some things that you can tell your college student to help make sure they won’t be the victim of identity theft:

• Always ask several questions before giving out a social security number: why is it needed? How is it stored? Will it be encrypted?
• Students should check their credit report at least once yearly to make sure there are so suspicious transactions
• Invest in a paper shredding machine so that any unwanted mail with personal information doesn’t go straight in the trash
• Create effective passwords on all sensitive accounts

If a student does end up being the victim of identity theft,  they should do three things:

1. File a police report with the local  and campus police in order to make sure that everything is well documented
2. Visit the Federal Trade Commission Website at www.ftc.gov and file a report
3. Contact their credit card companies and banks to report the crime

The best advice I have for you is to talk to your child about everything they can do to protect themselves from becoming victims of identity theft. It is far easier to avoid this sort of theft than it is to rectify the situation. It can take years to regain your identity and only one stupid mistake to lose it all.

Information for this post from here.

Take the test here to see how likely you are to be burglarized. The test uses some of the risk factors identified by police officers, security firms, crime stats, and security consultants to help gauge how your behaviors and current security system helps or hurts your chance of being robbed. It’s an interested test and even if you score quite high, there are always ways and places to improve your score. For example, the test notes that most people who score really well are apartment dwellers but also shows that there are several really key security factors – like, for example, a steel door.

What is your Security Risk?

There are some small steps you can take to help mitigate your risk without undergoing a full security analysis. For example, you should never leave mail with your address in your car. There is always the chance that a potential robber could discover your address and (knowing that you’re at work or out and about) tell his friends that your home is empty and primed for a robbery. Or, you should make an effort to get to know your neighbors – that way, if someone suspicious or untoward shows up at your doorstep with a ladder, your neighbors will be more likely to report the crime to the authorities. Or you should never leave doors to the outside of your home unlocked. Even while you’re in your home, you should get into the habit of always locking your doors. As we’ve said many times before, most home robbers are opportunistic  — they will rob your home so long as it is easy. There really is nothing easier than unlocked doors.

We love these sorts of quizzes. While they seem quite simplistic, it’s nice to get a third party to evaluate our everyday behaviors.

Did you take the quiz? What did you learn? What sort of changes are you going to make to your home and security?