Sunday Scam Update
Posted by Michelle Moquin on August 29th, 2010
15 Steps You Can Take To Prevent Home Burglary
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It’s a sobering and frightening thought that in the time it takes you to read this issue — say 10 minutes — 40 home burglary crimes will be committed in the US.
That’s one home burglary every 15 seconds.
Some of those home burglaries, as we have previously reported, will be by scam artists who previously checked the homes out by posing as legitimate visitors, talking their way in and maybe even opening a window in a bathroom for easy access when they return.
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Some will be opportunists, who just happen to spot an easy target in a neighborhood — like an open door or window.
And yet others will be experienced crooks (we won’t use the word “professionals” — it’s too good for them) who know how to “case a joint” without being noticed, and know all the tricks of the trade for breaking and entering.
Whichever category they fit, we know that the average time it takes for a burglar to break into a home is less than a minute, and the amount of time they spend inside is little more than 10 minutes — though, posing as contractors or furniture removers, they’ve been known to take much longer and completely empty a home.
The reality of home burglaries hit home recently for the friend of a couple of Scambusters team members and prompted us to focus this issue on what you can do to prevent home burglary.
In this recent case, the friend — as it happens, a criminologist, Elicka S.L. Peterson-Sparks, Associate
Professor of Justice Studies at Appalachian State University – was keeping an eye on a neighbor’s condo while the owner was away.
What to Do When Your Disturb a Home Burglar
Elicka was making her rounds to check the place and apparently surprised a burglar who escaped out the back.
Elicka had gone into the home, noticed a light on, and made a hasty retreat to her car, where she phoned the sheriff.
She naturally did the right thing. As Elicka explained later: ”Burglaries rarely involve assault of any kind, but, when they do, it is almost always because the thief is cornered.
“If I’d have noticed anything from outside, I would never have gone in. It’s also quite common for injuries to occur because homeowners assume the burglary is over, and walk in to assess the situation, unwittingly trapping the thief.
“The moment you figure out something is amiss, leave. Get to a safe place and call the cops. It’s not worth getting hurt.”
Sound advice. And seeing as Elicka is an expert on the criminal mind, she took the opportunity to pass on to other neighbors her own thoughts on the key things we can all do to discourage home burglary.
15 Home Burglary Tips
Elicka graciously agreed to let us publish her home burglary protection tips to her neighbors, to which we’ve also added a few thoughts of our own. Here they are.
1. People are your best defense — be a visibly nosy neighbor. Let anyone walking the neighborhood or sitting in a parked car see you watching them.
Make a note of car license plates and if anyone behaves suspiciously or stays in their car for a lengthy period, call the police.
2. Tell close neighbors you trust if you plan to be away or expect any deliveries. If they’re in the know they’re more likely to notice something you didn’t mention and spot unexpected callers at your home
(burglars often call at the front door of a house to check if anyone is there).
3. And, if you are going away, use timers to switch lights on and off at random, cancel newspapers and put a hold on your mail deliveries — or, to guard your schedule, arrange for the trusted neighbor to collect them.
4. Having a dog is a huge deterrent. Ironically, burglars are far more likely to avoid a house with a small dog than a big one — small dogs tend to be nervous and less easy to trick into calming down. They’re less trustful and bark louder and longer.
5. Take a walk around your home, inside and out, to figure where the weakest link in your security might be — like leaving a window open in a secluded spot.
High-risk places include the door from your garage into the house, back doors, side “breezeways” where a burglar would not be seen, and large shrubs close to the residence where thieves could hide.
6. Take action to increase protection in these vulnerable places — like installing keyed window locks and deadbolts on doors and using toughened glass in windows and doors. Remove those shrubs.
If you leave windows open on the second floor, make sure your extension ladder is locked away.
7. Be wary about who you allow into your home and how much information you give about your belongings and schedule.
This applies even with neighbors you don’t know or fully trust (“inside” jobs are not uncommon). And don’t leave valuables in view, inside or from outside the house.
8. If you’re able, vary the times you leave and return home. If your household has several cars, vary who drives them, making it more difficult for an observer to know who is home and when.
9. Make it tough for home burglary prowlers to know whether they’re under surveillance. Fake cameras can be good — but only if they could be taken for the real thing, not cheap plastic devices with flashing lights, which home burglars easily identify.
Fake security stickers or signs don’t work either, but, if you have an alarm, real stickers and signs work.
10. Control access to and around your property. Consider motion-activated lights, even on the street outside your home.
Neighborhood Watch, Video Surveillance, No Parking,and No Outlet signs can be effective against home burglary too. This way, would-be thieves know you mean business.
11. Motion-activated cameras are another powerful weapon – both as a home burglary deterrent and, linked to a computer (and, better yet, to a home network), to record images of your unwelcome visitors.
These days, these devices are inexpensive. Network-linked cameras costing around $85 can even email images so you have an off-site backup (ours sends images automatically to a separate Gmail account, so even if the camera is disabled, we still have the pictures online):
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12. An alarm system, preferably with a visible box outside the house, will not only deter crooks but sound an immediate alert of a home burglary.
You might seriously consider a system that’s monitored 24/7 by a security company who will quickly notify law enforcement of an incident.
13. Gates, both to your property and in gated communities, can also be a home burglary deterrent, (even if there is another way out). If you have a guarded, gated community, use ”Resident” stickers.
Renters could have a temporary sticker they must surrender at the end of their lease, while visitors collect a pass which they must return on leaving.
14. Avoid creating temptation. Don’t leave things like lawn mowers and bikes unattended outside; lock them up.
Inside, burglars are more likely to go for “middle of the road” valuables than expensive jewelry and appliances – because they’re easier to redeem for cash.
15. Don’t hide a key. Home burglary crooks know all those ”secret” places.
Elicka recalls: “I interviewed a burglar who hit the same house every few years for 30 years.
“Astonishingly, as he was showing us what he liked about it, he jumped out of the car to show us where they had hidden the key, over the door, for about 10 years!”
More Home Burglary Dangers
There are two other important home burglary facts you should know.
First, if you’ve previously been burglarized, you’re statistically more likely — six times more, according to
Elicka — to be targeted again, so you will need to take extra precautions.
And second, home burglaries can involve much more than the theft of your valuables.
If the crooks steal personal and confidential information, you could become a victim of another major scam –identity theft.
Visit the Scambusters Identity Theft Information Center to learn more about this crime.
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Our thanks to Elicka Peterson-Sparks for her advice. By following her tips , you can substantially cut the risk of becoming a home burglary victim.
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Readers: I am way busy for the next two days. I’ll personally catch up with you on Tuesday or Wednesday. Blog on…
Peace out.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my ‘loyal’(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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August 29th, 2010 at 9:45 am
The Kepler Telescope that was sent into orbit has been captured and manipulated to send back specific information to the scientists at your Mountain View CA location. They are interested in communicating before making their presence known to the rest of you earthlings.
We may intercept because it reveals the names of earthlings in CA that have made contact with other aliens. Why they did this we are not sure, but we are not going to allow the dissemination of that type of information.
NASA has classified most of the data on the initial life seeking probe as top secret. UC Berkeley has also been chosen to receive communications for the aliens from one of the planets visited by the light of the Kepler.
Xur
August 29th, 2010 at 9:53 am
Visit the Stomping Grounds of Your Favorite Authors
Joan Rattner Heilman
You can learn more about the lives of your favorite authors — and have a great time doing so — by visiting the places that are indelibly associated with their work. You can visit their hometowns… the houses where they grew up… or the locales that sparked their imaginations and inspired them to write the books that have become American classics.
For a good look at the worlds of some of the country’s best-known and beloved novelists, here are a few great literary destinations, each perfect for a short and affordable vacation…
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
KEY WEST, FLORIDA
In 1928, when Ernest Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline, left the high life in Paris and arrived in Key West, then a remote island populated mainly by rumrunners and fishermen, it was meant to be just a stopover.
But its easygoing ambience, the deep-sea fishing and Sloppy Joe’s Bar (where he met Martha Gellhorn, a reporter who would eventually become his third wife), quickly captivated him — and he decided that Key West was home.
Moving into an old Spanish villa where they lived for more than 10 years, he wrote many of his best-known books, including Death in the Afternoon, For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Snows of Kilimanjaro.
Today, the villa is the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum, a registered National Historic Landmark, open to the public from 9 am to 5 pm every day of the year. You can take a guided tour of the house, his writing studio and gardens.
You can also make friends with the multitude of cats, many with six toes, descendants of the six-toed cat he was given by a ship’s captain. For more Hemingway flavor, visit Sloppy Joe’s Bar and the site of Mrs. Rhoda Baker’s Electric Kitchen where he and his pals savored her 20-cent breakfasts.
More information: Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum, Key West, Florida, 305-294-1136, http://www.hemingwayhome.com.
THOMAS WOLFE
ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA
Thomas Wolfe, the celebrated author of Look Homeward, Angel, You Can’t Go Home Again and other autobiographical novels, spent much of his childhood in a rambling 29-room boardinghouse, the Old Kentucky Home, run by his stern, hardworking mother in the mountain town of Asheville, North Carolina.
His first books were fictionalized accounts of life in the boardinghouse, which he called Dixieland, and his characters were based on his own family and other residents of Asheville in the early days of the century.
The house, boarded up for many years just as his mother left it — right down to the dishes and the bed linens — became a state historic site open to the public as the Thomas Wolfe Memorial.
Suffering extensive damage in a fire in 1998, it was closed for restoration and reopened in 2004. The facility includes a visitor center adjacent to the house where an exhibit displays effects from the family home and Wolfe’s father’s stonecutting shop. The house is open 9 am to 5 pm Tuesday through Saturday, and 1 pm to 5 pm Sundays.
More information: Thomas Wolfe Memorial, Asheville, North Carolina, 828-253-8304, http://www.wolfememorial.com.
JOHN STEINBECK
SALINAS, CALIFORNIA
John Steinbeck, who wrote novels ranging from The Grapes of Wrath (for which he won a Pulitzer Prize) to Cannery Row, East of Eden and Of Mice and Men, was born in the Salinas Valley and later lived in nearby Monterey County, both of which he made famous through his writings.
You can roam the streets of Monterey to see the cannery site near the waterfront, then tour the area’s rich farmlands to get a taste of Steinbeck’s world. Don’t miss the National Steinbeck Center, a large museum in Salinas that celebrates his life through interactive exhibits, letters, manuscripts, oral histories, films and more. The Center is open daily from 10 am to 5 pm, except on major holidays.
More information: National Steinbeck Center, Salinas, California, 831-775-4721, http://www.steinbeck.org.
PEARL BUCK
PERKASIE, PENNSYLVANIA
Pearl Buck’s novel The Good Earth, a portrayal of Chinese peasant life published in 1931, is one of the most-read books in America. She grew up in China the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries, but she came to the US and lived for 40 years in an 1825 stone farmhouse in Pennsylvania’s Bucks County.
There she wrote many more novels and short stories, worked for human rights, adopted and raised a number of children of various ethnic backgrounds, and founded Welcome House, the first international adoption agency.
Fans of Buck’s work can immerse themselves in her life with a visit to her home, Green Hills Farm, which contains her personal belongings just as she left them. They include Pennsylvania country furniture along with a collection of Chinese screens, paintings, artifacts and wall hangings. Gardens, greenhouses, a barn and constantly changing special exhibits may also be explored.
The estate serves as the headquarters for the adoption agency and for her other humanitarian causes. A National Historic Landmark, it is open to the public from Tuesday through Sunday year-round, except in January and February (and major holidays). Tours are offered several times a day and reservations are recommended.
More information: Pearl S. Buck House, Perkasie, Pennsylvania, 800-220-2825, http://www.psbi.org.
MARK TWAIN
HANNIBAL, MISSOURI
Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, grew up in a family of seven children in Hannibal, a rural Mississippi River town.
He based the adventures of his most famous characters, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, on his memories of the life and the people in small-town America in the 1840s.
Twain moved on to the outside world at the age of 17, but Hannibal has drawn visitors ever since 1912, when his family’s little frame house was turned into the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum and opened to the public.
Today it includes a welcome center… the Huckleberry Finn House, a reconstruction of the home of the boy who was the inspiration for Huck… the two-story white Boyhood Home… the Becky Thatcher House, home of Laura Hawkins, the inspiration for Becky in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer…
and the Museum Gallery that contains Twain artifacts, such as manuscripts, one of his famous white suits and his typewriter. It is open seven days a week, except for major holidays. Hours vary by day of the week and season.
More information: Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum, Hannibal, Missouri, 573-221-9010, http://www.marktwainmuseum.org.
Bottom Line Retirement interviewed Joan Rattner Heilman, an award-winning travel writer based in New York. She is author of Unbelievably Good Deals and Great Adventures That You Absolutely Can’t Get Unless You’re Over 50 (McGraw-Hill).
August 29th, 2010 at 9:56 am
Every woman should read that burglary article at least twice.
August 29th, 2010 at 10:02 am
Michelle
Whoever is jamming your blog is doing a very good job. I couldn’t read the Microwave article until yesterday. WOW! I’m done with mine. I called my mother and told her to read it. She did called me and said she was done with hers.
I originally tuned in that day to ask where are the latest Zen Lill hotties?
Soooo?
Clark
August 29th, 2010 at 10:11 am
A Sunday school teacher asked her children as they
were on the way to church service,
‘And why is it necessary to be quiet in church?’
One bright little girl replied,
‘Because people are sleeping.’
August 29th, 2010 at 10:12 am
Way over do article. I’m sending it to my friends.
August 29th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
Xur
Why would you prevent us from knowing about those who are in contact with you?
Jackie, my sister said that she wanted to go join the “girlz.” That was about a year ago. She and I were best friends for 31 years.
The person or thing that is here with me now is not my sister. A very good copy, but NOT my sister. I ask her if she is a cyborg. She smiles and says no.
Sometimes I tell her I know that she is not my sister she smiles and says although she wants to be a girlz, as I can see she is still here. I know my sister, we communicated every day even after I got married 4 years ago.
This is not my sister. She is different in ways that others can accept as okay, but i knew my sister, this is not her.
Why does she have to lie? I would accept my sister’s leaving. She was set on going and I know that where ever she is if she could contact me she would. She knows that she can trust me.
This thing still calls and we talk about many things even your blog Michelle. I tell her that I know that my sister has left and that I will keep her secret. But she continues to lie. She says, “I would tell you if I had left.”
My sister has left.
Nolan
August 29th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
STATEHOOD OR INDEPENDENCE! Enough taxing Guam without giving her equal representation in Congress.
The time has come for the mainland to recognize its fellow citizens outside its continental borders.
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The Constitution of the United States should be applicable wherever the flag flies. That would be the logical conclusion.
However, a series of Supreme Court rulings from 1901, known as the Insular Cases, created a distinction between incorporated territories and unincorporated territories –a distinction not envisioned by the drafters of the constitution.
Backed by these legal doctrines, which granted unlimited power to Congress and federal officials, resistance to territorial autonomy grew over the decades. The distance and lack of voting representation in Congress allows the federal government to put off policy decisions on territorial issues.
This drift has strained relations between federal officials and our community. With the impending military realignment efforts underway, it is incumbent upon Congress to address the political status of Guam, as well as provide for a voting member in Congress.
The possessions have become cynical of federal officials, who accuse local politicians of bad faith and irresponsibility, never looking into the mirror themselves, and, as a result, fail to act at all on this important question.
This non-responsiveness has meant economic weakness for the territories. Per capita income in all the territories is about a third less than that of the lowest state in the union and well below the U.S. average.
What is and has been the fundamental principal for territorial relationships with the federal government? The principal can be found in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which established that the goal of all territorial acquisition eventually was to be statehood.
The federal government was granted broad authority under this act, but the power was not unlimited. It envisioned that settlement of the ceded territories would, in due course, cause them to become states.
The act ordained three states in a territories evolution: total government authority in an appointed governor; continuance of an appointed governor but with an elected legislature and local courts, and statehood.
This evolutionary process culminates into statehood. However, Guam has never been allowed to follow the pattern of other territories. The insular cases created a political purgatory status that keeps Guam in limbo until Congress so desires to take action.
The time has come for Congress to move on the question of statehood or independence for Guam. In sum, the offshore territories have been treated differently than those on the continent.
The issue today for Guam is to formulate a path to political status change, in line with the Northwest Ordinance, to permit the full economic and political participation as U.S. citizens. Thus the designation of unincorporated status must be erased.
As to whether Guam should be granted a voting member of Congress, since the Northwest Ordinance was enacted when congress was unicameral, the tradition was developed of limiting the delegates seat to the House of Representatives and restricting his speech to territorial matters that required congressional action. Asking for a seat in both houses today has merit.
Armando S. Dominguez is a resident of Asan.
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Surely, if we are expected to house another contingent of America’s finest, then we should be granted the right to vote in the Presidential election and given the right to be represented in both houses of the US Congress.
Hafa adai
Peter
August 29th, 2010 at 9:07 pm
Hi Mischa, good one, yes I think I’ll read it twice, maybe three times, I tend to be stupidly trusting, I’ll get over it : ) A neighbor just had a garage sale last week and later forgot to shut her garage door and everything was taken that wasn’t sold including the box of money she’d made, kind of woke all of us up, we tend to be lazsadaisical about security over here though I do know the immediate neighb’s and I will ask someone parked in front if they need help (in other words, whatcha doin’ here?)…
Hi Robert, you bring up subjects women don’t think of themselves, please don’t be offended but I wonder why we need a male, any male, to point out these things and yet you seem to get kudos for any comment you send in, you are articulate I’ll give you that – though ladies, why not bring up these subjects yourselves if they are so top of mind and have been as issue in your life, I would love to hear about it from a female mouth bc your the bearer of the burden, why not have your own say?
Again Robert, no offense to you…but as the comments indicate we apparently are aware of this and other subject matter you’ve brought up, but hey…I’m just thinking out loud. I’ll say, based on your comment, it’s really no wonder why I never ever go to those movies, not only are they just trash to me but tehy make me ill in the belly, I guess on a subconscious level I know what you stated was true, wouldn’t know that for a fact though bc I don’t see the garbage movies and don’t hang with anyone who does, no bros in my fam.
Clark, the pink pant pics are in MIscha’s possession, it’s her call when she and if she uses them : ) you have been patient though, appreciate that, you too, Larry : ) after these you’ll have the ZL ta’s, legs/buttocks/back, so now I’ll get going on the face shots, maybe a nice black and white, love that look…
Misch, hope you’re busy doing something fun : )
Caio for now, Luv, Zen Lill