Home Security

College Safety offices everywhere are reminding students not to leave doors open. But these images are far more frequent than they or we’d like. And remember, it’s not only college students who are vulnerable to doors left open — those of you living in apartment communities or large complexes can fall prey to savvy burglars as well.

It’s Security 101: a propped open door just reeks of opportunity. Once inside of a large apartment or dorm complex it’s very hard to differentiate between a legitimate tenant and a thief.

College campuses are particularly prone to this. I remember dorm block parties where we left the doors propped so other students could come inside. As a college freshman, it didn’t occur to me that ANYONE could get into my dorm, where I slept behind an often unlocked door. Apartment dwellers face similar concerns (particularly those without any concierge or onsite manager). How many times have you seen your neighbors prop open building doors?

Protect Yourselves and Your Neighbors

Don’t make it easy for burglars to come into your home: Live safely & close the door. In our passion for safety and the good city life, we’re hoping that you will close propped doors wherever you see them. And remind your friend, son or daughter on college campuses to close propped doors. We can all be the Karma Police and do a little bit to keep everyone around us, neighbor or stranger, a little bit safer.

Get an Apartment Security System

Few apartment owners and renters even know that there is a home security option specifically designed for them. Unfortunately this means millions of people lack personal safety and peace of mind. The advances in technology mean that you can have a wireless apartment security system in place and monitored within a few days. No hardwiring, no technician entering your apartment. SimpliSafe will ship you your customized system and you can install if your self in 20 minutes.



By: Melina Martinez


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Many individuals who are searching for the perfect apartment in Houston are all concerned about security in one form or another. But your personal security is just one shade. The other type of security is for your personal belongings in your apartment home and also includes your vehicle. Many burglars have a very easy time entering apartment homes as access gates or doors are open at many apartment homes in the Galleria area. If you currently live in an apartment home, the security should be you #1 concern for you, your family, and your personal items.

There are many mistakes renters make, however the main mistake they make is by installing a security system after they have already been a victim of a crime. There is no time like the present and many people have turned to a life that includes crime, especially with the state of the economy. Please take the steps to install a property intrusion alarm today.

Some apartment communities already have security alarms installed in the apartment homes. Those that already have them are lucky as they won’t have to pay for any upfront costs. But for those that do not, and don’t wish to spend money can take some other preventive measures

Leave Your Lights On

Make sure you leave your lights on during dark hours. Many would be burglars believe that someone is currently occupying the apartment home and will be less likely to attempt a break in. There are light timing switches that you can program to go on at certain times.

Are Your Door Locks Working Properly

If your door locks are worn or don’t work properly contact the leasing office at your apartment home. Many people will try and pry open your door. A deadbolt usually works best for the majority of the situations.

Purchase a Dog

Most burglars will avoid confrontation with dogs. They will move onto the next apartment home. They do not want to draw attention or get harmed. Dogs can make a lot of noise through excessive barking. And the larger the dog the more unlikely a burglar will break in your apartment home.

An alarmed system is best to prevent break-ins, however if you cannot afford one, there are some other preventive measures you can take. Many new apartment communities are constructing apartments with alarm systems today.

Rent a Unit on The Top Floor

If you have heavy items that are expensive, chances are burglars are not going to walk down stairs with them in their hand. Also many apartment balconies can be jumped over on the ground floor leaving easy access to your personal belongings.

Also your neighbors are your friends. Get to know them well. Soon if they see anything extraordinary occurring on the property when you are away, they can take action.

There are many ways you can increase your security at your apartment community today.



By: Andrew Reichek

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With home burglary and home invasions making the news almost every day, homeowners are justifiably concerned about their own safety and security. There is a physical loss of an average of $1700 from each home burglary. There is another average of $1700 worth of damage done to the home. That pales in comparison to the psychological damage done to the homeowner and his family. It is a feeling of violation that lasts for years.

And yet it seems so simple to take some proactive steps to prevent home burglary. For example, nearly 90% of all home burglaries occur through doors and windows that are not locked. So doesn’t it make sense to start by locking them? Home security for many can be very simple. But homeowners are sometimes lazy and don’t take any preventative measures.

Just making your home less attractive to a burglar from the outside can go a long ways towards improving your home security and protecting it against home burglary. Try removing shrubs along lower-level doors and windows to eliminate hiding places. Put a sign in your front yard warning of a vicious guard dog. You don’t even need a dog-just the sign will do.

If a burglar does get into your house, have you taken any steps to protect your valuables? It is just a proven fact that a burglar will spend, on average, 6 minutes or less inside a house. Even a nimble burglar cannot check every possible place to find valuables. So where is the best place to hide valuables and protect them?

Hiding them in “plain sight” is the best way. They go for the obvious first; drawers and closets but would they think of looking in a mantle clock or on a bookshelf for a book safe? The things burglars look for first are the things that they can fence the fastest; valuables such as jewelry, guns and of course cash.

A home offers many places to hide valuables. But safes such as gun safes, hidden safes and book safes are actually some of the most secure places to hide valuables.

The large Book Safe is a great example. It has a 3″ x 8″ x 9″ interior compartment that is big enough to hold securities, jewelry, cash, or even a small handgun or anything else of value. The three digit combination lock ensures further security. This book safe will fit right into any collection of books or leave it lying right on your living room table in plain sight.

Book safes, gun safes and other hidden safes are the best places to hide valuables in your home.



By: Dave Artman

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Home security systems are generally considered to be the most effective way to protect your home against burglary or home invasions. Just ask a big company like ADT why they do so many commercials on television and so much advertising and print media. The demand for home security is at an all-time high. Out of all the systems that exist for home security a wireless home alarm system is generally considered to be the best.

Wireless alarms like door alarms and window alarms are inexpensive and very effective at scaring burglars away once they get inside the house. A home alarm system is more expensive but can do so much more for you in terms of home security.

Here are the top three wireless home alarm systems for you to compare to see if one is suitable for your home alarm security.

The first is the Home Safe wireless system. It includes a base control unit with keypad that is programmable and an alarm of 105 db. It has one wireless window/door sensor with a range of up to 300 feet and one motion detector sensor that has a range of up to 24 feet. If the alarm is triggered, the system calls up to five emergency phone numbers that you program on your own. You can add up to 14 additional sensors. The panic button that’s included on the remote, works as a caretaker emergency notification system for the elderly.

The second one is the eight piece home Security Alarm System. This system provides professional quality security at a do it yourself price. It includes one motion detector alarm which can detect motion up to 10 meters away and two glass break sensors. Once armed, it will respond with an ear-piercing alarm and a blinding strobe light. The system can be used for home or business which makes it very flexible.

The third system is the Voice Alert system that operates a little bit differently. It is an “annunciator” system. The base unit can support up to six sensors-two are included with the product. The homeowners record their own alert message for each area covered which is a 40′ x 40′ area. The unit will cover up to 1000 feet in open space and 300 feet through walls. It uses passive infrared technology for the sensors similar to radar. The sensors are weatherproof. The main advantage of this system is that it can cover a huge area but it’s mostly for external security.

Those are three of the top wireless alarm systems for home security. As you can see there are some differences between them. One may be better than the other for your particular needs.



By: Dave Artman

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There are ethical questions that you will want to address within yourself regarding privacy and such. Once you’ve got your guidelines set, you will find that hidden video cameras offer you the most incredible opportunity to catch stealing employees, photograph potential burglars and stalkers, catch an unfaithful spouse, a troublesome animal or fix any number of problem situations.

Not that long ago, the only folks that could afford security cameras were James Bond, NASA and the police. Technology has worked its usual wonders. Anyone can afford a video surveillance system now. The image quality is great, the cost has fallen through the floor and they are easy to install and use.

When they first came out, video cameras were bulky and unreliable with image quality that could kindly be called poor. They were hard-wired to a central system where there was either a human monitor or a recording device of some sort. Hours upon hours of video would be recorded with much of it watching an area with no movement.

Incredible things are now standard on all but the lowest priced security cameras. They include:

The quality of the images is near photo quality. There is no hard wiring. The units are wireless. Size matters. They are available now in sizes that only the super heroes and super villains of the movies could hope for. They have gone beyond wireless. They now have on board memories that can hold many hours of imaging. Why waste memory space. The newest cameras have motion sensing capabilities that let the camera sleep till some one comes into the field of view. To fine tune even further the motion sensing capability, the surveillance cameras can be programmed to deaden parts of the sensor field so that small animals or little kids playing won’t trigger the devices. If you want to keep an eye on a dark area, hidden video cameras can be bought with night vision capability.

To capture your video, you download it from the camera into your computer. You can also have a wireless feature that allows you to send the images at pre-programmed times to a central digital video recorder.

The neatest feature of the modern units is their size. They can be hidden almost anywhere. There is a company now that sells empty containers of common household items like shaving cream which are plenty large enough to hold a hidden video camera. For the outside, you might want a camera in a flower pot or disguised as a floodlight.

The possibilities are endless as are the opportunities these amazing systems offer you.



By: Octavien J. Remillard

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Home security is becoming more important to homeowners as incidents of home invasion and home burglary happen more frequently. There is anecdotal evidence to show that home burglary is on the rise. Just look at your local TV station news every night. There’s almost always a story about a home burglary or home invasion.

Some police officials state that because of the poor economy, more people are turning to burglary. Burglary is a low risk high reward enterprise. But there are some things that scare burglars away. That’s why security gadgets and security devices are selling more than ever before. They are a cheap way to improve home defense.

Here are four security gadgets to improve your home defense.

A burglar who had committed over 70 burglaries successfully recently got caught and revealed some home protection tips to homeowners to prevent burglary. One of them was that if he saw a security camera on a house-even a fake one-he would definitely stay away!

1. Dummy security cameras or fake security cameras are a great way to improve your home defense for very little money. They’re very real looking with blinking red lights, cabling and housing for the camera. Not many people can tell the real thing from the fake.

2. Another tip that he said made him choose another house was a house that was lit up. Great ways to do that is to use motion activated spotlights on the outside and lights that are on timers on the inside. Light-sensitive timers will turn lights off in daylight and turn them on in darkness. They are great home defense tools for homeowners who work at night, for example.

3. The Video Patrol Camera is an outdoor, weather resistant spy camera that can take 26,000 still photos or 75 minutes of video. It uses an infrared sensor to record only when there is activity in front of it. It requires some light so if you have a spotlight outside that should be sufficient. It helps capture images of anyone who might be breaking into your house or vandals who would do damage to your car or property.

4. It used to be that homeowners would hide a spare key underneath a doormat. There isn’t a burglar alive who didn’t know that trick. Now there are key safes that are in outdoor thermometers or in water sprinkler heads. So get creative and hide your spare key somewhere else.

Those are four of the best tools you can use to improve your home security and home defense. There are others too such as door alarms and window alarms, but these four are some of the best to improve your home security.



By: Dave Artman

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A burglar alarm system will significantly improve your home security to prevent an intruder attack. In order to choose the best burglar security alarm system it is helpful to understand how they work and what the various basic components are that make up an alarm system.

The basic configuration of an average home security alarm system consists of a control panel, siren and sensors. The control panel will need a permanent power supply and its job is to monitor the sensors so when the alarm is in “armed” mode, it will make the siren sound if any of the sensors are triggered. Depending on the model of alarm, it is often possible to select sensors to go into several zones. You can then decide to switch off certain zones from being monitored, if desired. Why would you want to turn off zones? If you are upstairs asleep in bed you may want to turn off the upstairs sensors so if anyone got up in the night, the alarm would not be triggered.

The siren is the audible alert that gets switched on by the control panel when a sensor is triggered. A siren will need a permanent power supply and should be installed as high up as possible on your property so it cannot be tampered with. Some people even prefer to have the siren positioned inside the property, e.g. in the roof compartment so it cannot be disabled. Others, who use monitored home security, prefer not to have a siren at all. So when the alarm is triggered, the monitoring company will react to the alarm call and send for help on your behalf. There is no doubt however, that a siren has visual impact and will deter burglars, even before they have entered onto your property.

The final main components that make up an alarm systems are the sensors. There are a variety of sensors available that all monitor your home in a different way. For example, a door switch generally uses a magnetic reed switch to detect if a door has been opened whereas a PIR motion detector will use infra-red technology to detect movement in a room. You would generally have a PIR detector per room and door switches on each exterior door. There are door and window shock sensors that can detect a strike to your doors or windows. Many home security alarms allow the addition of smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors. As they are connected to your alarm, if smoke or deadly carbon monoxide is detected, your alarm will be triggered too.



By: Andy J Jones

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Deigratiscompany asked:

No homeowner expects a burglary. Here are 3 home security tips that will deter burglars and make your house and/or its contents more secure. One tip is so simple and effective that it is often overlooked. protecthouse.net

bloodcut85 asked:

BOYNTON BEACH In October, burglars stole thousands of dollars in jewelry and rare coins from Jeanne Thomas home. Then, other things began to disappear. The crockpot. The ice-cream maker. So, Thomas bought a video surveillance system to monitor her Boynton Beach home. She could even check on her house while at work using a live video feed over the Internet. Full story available here tblog.in

Why should you bother with preventive home security measures? Because of one simple fact — most home break-ins are crimes of opportunity.

Burglars don’t usually do much advance planning for specific break-ins. They pick out any target that seems to be easy. If closer examination reveals that your home is not an easy target, they just move on.

Here are 8 things you can do to prevent your home from looking like a soft target.

1. All doors and windows should be plainly visible from the street and to your neighbors. Large shrubs and hedges which hamper visibility make it easy for burglars to do their job.

That’s why any bushes and shrubs that are within four feet of sidewalks, driveways, doors, etc should be kept under a couple of feet high. Those within four to eight feet should be trimmed to not more than four feet high.

2. Do you place plants under window sills? If so, trim them to a foot lower than the window sill level.

3. Trees should not hamper visibility to your house. Also ensure that burglars can’t use trees to gain access to your second floor windows and doors. Trim trees so that the lowest branches are seven feet or more above the ground.

4. Large gauge gravel causes noise when burglars walk on it. Placing them under windows is a good psychological deterrent.

5. Use fencing around your house and keep gates locked (even when you are at home, if possible). This sounds elementary, but locked gates prevent burglars from making off easily with large items!

In other words, ensure that there are no quick exits from the house.

6. Grow thorny plants under windows and along fences. They are very discouraging to burglars. Fencing using thorny plants is as good as barbed wire fencing and looks a whole lot better.

7. Ensure that street numbers are clearly visible from the street. This helps anyone responding to emergency calls to reach your home faster.

House numbers placed on your house should be six inches high and made of reflective material. Alternatively, use black on white lettering. The numbers should be illuminated at night.

Paint your house number on the curb in front of your driveway, using black lettering on white background.

8. Don’t leave ladders and tools lying around. They should be locked away in a in a storage area or garage.

Get these eight things right and you will have enhanced your home security to a level that will make many potential burglars uneasy about targeting your home.



By: James Strobes

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