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Everybody worries about the security of their homes and families. The question is: how can you make your home safe without turning it into Fort Knox? The sad fact is that, if someone is determined to get into your home, they can and will. Ten years ago, my home was ‘safe’, but I was tricked into opening the door and I let my attackers in. No home security system can safeguard against situation like that.

Burglars look for homes that seem vulnerable. Most burglars are opportunistic. In other words, if they see an open door or window or if it is obvious that no one is at home and if there is no noticeable security, then it is worth them attempting to get in. Open gates are also an incitement. So are valuable possessions put on show in windows.

It only takes minutes to steal something, you would be astonished. I let two armed robbers into my house and they timed 15 minutes to take everything of value in my house and then a car stopped outside to pick them up. It was night time and I was tied up. It could have been a taxi, which would not have aroused my neighbours’ suspicion.

It is important to show people (opportunistic thieves) that you have a home security system of some type. If you cannot afford a proper, working alarm system, get a dummy siren box with a flashing light. It is not as good as a real system, but it would take a brave or desolate burglar to find out, which means that you cannot tell anyone at all, in case it gets out.

A home security system is well-worth the money you will spend on it. The stress of being burgled or even held up, like I was, will make you wish that you were more security conscious. But it does not stop when the burglars go away. Then the police come and I spent from midnight until 4AM at the police station. I had to go back at least a dozen times after that. My insurance company had dozens of queries and it took four months to get a disbursement.

I felt certain that the burglars knew me, and I felt threatened everywhere I went for months. I could not stop glaring into people’s eyes to see if I could recognize my intruders’ (they had masks on, but I saw one man’s eyes). My life has altered radically. I even moved out of my house the next day and never went back again.

As I said before, I had a decent system in situ, but I had turned it off when I got home and opened the front door to my burglars. My suggestion is to get a wired or wireless home security system and, if you can afford it, get a monitored home security system with at least one surveillance camera, but preferably one on each external wall and one inside in the hall.

Obtain contact sensors for all external doors and vibration sensors for all windows. Put a personal panic button by all external doors and have garden lights that are switched on by motion or body heat outside. Keep your system activated and be very suspicious of who you open the door to.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with wired home security systems. If you are interested in Security Systems For Home Use, please click through to our site.

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People have always tried to protect themselves and their families, just like most animals do. In very early days, cavemen protected their caves by lighting fires outside the entrance to discourage interlopers and wild animals. Later on, man learned how to increase his security by training dogs to safeguard him and his family. Later still, houses and then doors were invented; bars and locks arrived soon after that.

However, until a few decades ago in the west, people lived in extended large families. A family could consist of six-to-ten children and the mother and the grandmother would often live there too. This made home security systems extraneous from the early 18th Century to the 1930′s, which were quite peaceful times. After the Second World War, families were not so large and new families got their own house away from their parents.

Nowadays, both parents are likely to be working and the children are probably at school. This means that many houses are left unoccupied during the day, making them easy plunder for burglars. In fact, the number of household burglaries has increased by almost 10% in the last five years according to American government figures. Furthermore, according to a survey, forty percent of home burglaries were carried out due to inappropriate locks and doors.

ANSI (American National Standard Institute) produced a standard for deadbolt locks for exterior doors which is very difficult to beat. If you are worried about your exterior doors, you should seek these ANSI deadbolts out, but beware, there are many copies. However, regardless of the kind of lock, the quality of the door is just as crucial. Its thickness and composition can also be a deterrent. After all, why put an expensive deadbolt on a door made of cardboard?

There are about 14,000,000 home burglaries each year in the United States and many of them are preventable. The first stage that you should achieve in home security is strong doors and strong locks. Deadbolts on exit doors is a good idea.

Once you have completed that, get some exterior security lighting that reacts to either motion or body heat. The former kind are microwave and the latter passive infra red sensors. These sensors will also contain a daylight sensor so that they will only become active at night. The sensors will also save you money by activating the powerful halogen floodlights only when someone enters the range of the sensor’s beam.

Once you have done that, you should think about a home security alarm system. This should include contact sensors on all exterior doors and windows, vibration sensors on all widows to alarm you in case of breakage and PIR or microwave motion sensors in the corridors and hallways.

Then, if you want to go even further in your home security system, you can install surveillance cameras on each exposed wall of the house and maybe one in the interior too. You do not have to take all these preventive measures at once, if you are short of cash, but they should be taken in that sequence.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with home security systems comparison. If you are interested in Security Systems For Home Use, please click through to our site.

Many Americans are just starting to appreciate that advanced security measures are not only for the extremely rich. You just cannot get too much security for yourself and your family or your employees. The problems in society are getting worse too, not better. The current recession is hitting hard and splitting society even more into the have and have-nots, the working and the not-working.

However, these days criminals do not target the very wealthy, because they have all the protection that money can buy. The citizens most likely to be robbed and burgled are the working middle classes. They get robbed when they are at work and the kids are at school or when they are sleeping in their beds.

This is why it is necessary to have the best automated security you can afford taking care of your home and family twenty-four hours a day. But it is not only your home, your business and workers deserve security as well. How many gun-toting lunatics have shot their co-workers dead in the last few years?

Not many firms can afford security personnel but you could get the next best thing, which is electronically monitored surveillance. There are various types of system available and most are flexible enough to be adaptable to any building. You could then monitor the system yourself during working hours by having a screen in the office or your home and relay the signal to a security firm at other times of the day, at weekends and at night.

If you take on this sort of system, you will be placing your home or office in the top level of secured properties and professional thieves will realize it and avoid you and yours. Most people resent the monitoring fees, but the system falls down, if no-one is watching the image relayed by the cameras. You could try to reduce this cost by monitoring the images yourself for part of the day and switching the image to professionals when you are unavailable. You could also ask your insurance company for a discount and ask your accountant to put the cost down against your taxes.

The good thing about a monitored system is that you know that help is at hand twenty-four hours every day. You may be living alone or prone to fits or a heart attack. You could get almost instant help in these instances by pressing the panic alarm. These panic buttons can be placed at the front and back door, in every room in the house or you could have a radio button on a necklace around your neck. These systems are quite common and are used by many care centres for the elderly or the infirm.

You will probably have to do some arithmetic to discover whether you need or can afford a monitored home security system, but there is no doubt that it is the most secure system available. However, not all home security monitoring companies are the same, so it is worth checking up with friends or with the companies’ governing body or even the local council to see if they have a good reputation.

Owen Jones, the author of this writer, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with home security systems comparison. If you are interested in Security Systems For Home Use, please click through to our site.