Famous Burglar Caught, Another Killed

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Yet another reason to invest in home security systems.

Some people work in a building, others on construction sites. Some work in banks and some in people’s homes. Burglars and bandits go to work to rob banks and homes and that’s a normal days work for them.

A dude named Robert James Neese famous for burglarizing Dan Quayle the former Vice President under Bush Sr is known as the “Rock Burglar” and got his name by tossing rocks through a glass door or windows to gain entry to his victim’s homes. How original.

Neese racked up a reported 337 break-ins over 17 years and stole an estimated $10 million in cash and jewels. He was busted in Arizona and now instead of throwing rocks he’ll be breaking them on a chain gang.

Another famous burglar in Georgia known as the Grandma Bandit wasn’t a grandma at all, but just another (more than likely) drug addicted dude who donned a grandma disguise and posed as a cancer patient at numerous drug stores and would ask for drugs, then demand money.

After a string of robberies police released security surveillance video and photos of the robber who was eventually identified by a concerned citizen who called the police. And unfortunately for the Grandma Bandit, that police chase ended badly. He was eventually shot and killed by police.

Unfortunately there will be someone to take these burglars place. Invest in your home security and adhere to the home security tips below:

Install signage. “Beware of Dog” and “This House is Alarmed” neon signs for $1.98. One for the front door and one for the back door.

Go to the pet store. Get 2 big dog bowls, one for the front porch and one for the back. Write “Killer” in permanent marker on it. This gives the impression you have a big dog. You can even buy a barking dog alarm.

Lock your doors and windows. Install a monitored alarm system. Consider ADT Pulse™ that comes with a battery backup even when the poser goes out.

Give your home that lived in look. Leave the TV on LOUD while you are gone.

Install timers on your lights both indoor and outdoor. Close the shades to prevent peeping inside.

Robert Siciliano personal and home security specialist to Home Security Source

Preparing a Mobile or PC for Resale or Donation

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You may have read my last post where I talked about “Clean the Clutter” out of your life and sell all the stuff you don’t absolutely need. In my Clean the Clutter process I sold 1 Windows XP laptop computer (missing lots of keys), 2 Windows XP desktops and 5 mobile phones all on Craigslist.

Prior to selling my electronics I wiped all the data off of each device. Cleaning all the data off your salable electronics is absolutely essential in our identity theft prone world.

It’s easy.

Reinstall your operating system: The best and quickest want to clean your data is to re-install the operating system. For Windows based PCs insert your operating systems disk and restart the PC. When restarting keep hitting F12 or your PC may want you to hit F2 or F8 and select “boot from CD” and follow the prompts. Most data forensics guys will tell you to reinstall 3 times to really clean it out. Microsoft has more instructions here that just confuses me: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/help/install-reinstall-uninstall or use KillDisk HERE

Clean your Phone: For mobile phones you want to do a factory reset. All software to do this is already on the phone.

Android factory reset: Menu > Settings > Privacy > Factory data reset.

iPhone factory reset: Settings > General > Reset > reset all settings.

Blackberry factory reset: Options > Security Options > General Settings > Menu > Wipe Handheld.

Windows 7 phone factory reset: Settings > About > Reset Phone

Any other operating systems or Symbian based phones you will need to do a search on your phone online such as “Phone Name, Model Number, Carrier, Factory reset”

Remember to remove or wipe any media like SD cards and CD/DVDs too.

Otherwise get a drill and poke lots of holes in the device and its hard drive or hit it with a sledge hammer. This may be lots of fun, however this may make it less saleable.

Robert Siciliano personal and home security specialist to Home Security Source discussing home security and identity theft on TBS Movie and a Makeover. Disclosures.

 

Cleaning the Clutter Out of Your Life

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While anyone who reads me knows I’m all about personal security and preaching the need for home security systems, I’m also a big advocate for personal balance too. Meaning I come from the old school of motivation, personal responsibility, eating right, exercise, healthy relationships, perspective, spirituality etc. You get the picture.

You may know or have heard, if you don’t like your life, change it.

Anyway, one of the first steps that one can do to get order in their life is to remove the clutter. That clutter can be people or things. And for the purposes of this post we are talking things.

First, it’s Spring, which means Spring cleaning, which means looking inside and outside your home at everything you haven’t touched in a year. Do you really need it? That’s often a hard question to answer. That tool you bought that you used, and may use again, but haven’t used it for two years, do you really need it?

Here are some tips:

#1 Toss or recycle everything that is of no value to you or anyone else. That’s the quickest way to clean out.

#2 Determine what you can donate. Give it away. The Salvation Army or Good Will and many Big Brothers/Big Sisters take donations. Pack up your trunk and donate it. Sometimes they will pick it up too.

#3 Sell it on eBay. I’m amazed at what people will buy off of eBay. I’ve sold more broken down items that I specifically said were broken down. Selling electronics and other harder to find or odd items are easily sold on eBay. List it for bid at .99 and accept what you get and move on. Get the eBay mobile application and walk around your house and start listing all the stuff on shelves and in boxes. It took me less than an hour to list 19 items.

#4 Sell it on Craigslist. I’m further amazed at what people buy on Craigslist. Get the CraigsPro app and start snapping. I like this the best because it’s so easy that all of a sudden you start looking at all your clutter like money sitting there collecting dust. Things that I thought I needed that I used in the past year I realized I really don’t need. And now they are gone and I have a fat envelope.

Remember this is about cleaning the clutter, not holding onto your stuff for dear life and listing it at 10 percent off what you paid for it in 1992. At best it’s worth 10 percent of what you paid for it. GET RID IF IT. A hundred dollar table,10 bucks.

Just be very alert to Craigslist scams. Never ship anything to a Craigslist buyer, never click links in an email from someone responding to your Craigslist ad, if they leave a phone number in the ad realize even if it’s a local number it could be a scam. If you dive into the process you’ll quickly see the scams.

Clean the clutter!

Robert Siciliano personal and home security specialist to Home Security Source discussing ADT Pulse™ on Fox News. Disclosures

Increase Security with a Life Size Card Board You

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A cardboard cutout of you or a cardboard action figure of a WWE wrestler is a creative and inexpensive way to DIY home security that adds a layer of protection to your home security system. And it doesn’t cost a lot and it’s kind of fun.

I’m serious!!!!

This is not an idea I just thought of one day, it’s one I stumbled upon by accident.

A few years ago a “speakers bureau” I work with actually went ahead and had a 6 foot cardboard cutout made of me for a trade show they were doing at a Boston area convention center. While I was flattered, I was certainly amused.

The bureau president called me and told me what he was doing then offered the life-size me to me once the show was over. I was like “What am I going to do with that?” and he made a joke that it could keep my wife company while I was on the road, and actually a cardboard me that doesn’t talk or talk back would be appealing to my wife so I picked it up from him.

I brought it home and put it in my garage and let the dust collect on it. Then I had a kid. And at 1.5 years when she started walking she eventually came upon the cardboard me and it startled her. Her mom trying to explain that was as funny.

Then shortly after I had a party and brought someone into my garage to jump in the car for a packy run and the cardboard me scared the heck out of them. Since then about a dozen people have been jostled by it. Now it’s just funny!

Now, especially when I travel, the cardboard me is standing in front of the TV. My wife loves him. I’m a little jealous.

Robert Siciliano personal and home security specialist to Home Security Source discussing burglar proofing your home on Fox Boston. Disclosures.

Scams Setting Record Pace

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There is limit to what the criminal scammy mind can conjure up.

KMOV reports Scammers have been using military photos to trick unsuspecting women on dating websites into giving them money.

The scam artists use pictures of soldiers and post them as their own. Once they convince the women to trust them, they ask for money. The military says it gets a lot of complaints about scammers swiping official military photos and using them to create dating profiles.

Fox Memphis reports The Shelby County Office of Preparedness is keeping flood victims from becoming scam victims, and making sure they stay safe from fake contractors.

Homes across the county are going to need home repairs due to flooding, so the Office of Preparedness is asking contractors to register their business. The office will then issue ID cards that let flood victims know the contractor is real.

But it’s not just “people” getting scammed. It’s big companies too.

The Star Tribune reports A man admitted that from December 2004 through December 2005 he submitted phony invoices to Best Buy on behalf of his shipping company for electronic equipment that was never sent. He had Best Buy send the payments for those invoices, amounting to more than $900,000, to a post office box in Glenolden, Pa.

CliffView pilot reports A Hudson County con man admitted his role in a scheme to steal more than $4.4 million from several Voice Over Internet Protocol service providers by setting up shell companies that he and his cohorts claimed operated from the Empire State Building and other prominent addresses. His victims included AT&T, Cordial Communications, Digerati Networks, France Telecom, and others.

Whether you are an employee from a big or small company or just a concerned citizen you must keep your head up and pay attention to the “intentions” of all those you come in contact with. Whether over the phone, email, internet or mail, scammers are in full force and looking for their next mark.

Robert Siciliano personal and home security specialist to Home Security Source discussing ADTPulse on Fox News. Disclosures

‘Familial DNA’ Helps Catch Killers and Rapists

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Along with your neighborhood watch program and wireless home alarm system you should be comforted to know that there are technologies out there being put to use that help catch the bad guy.

Many of us by now know that a sample of Osama bin Laden’s DNA was used to effectively identify him. But how? They didn’t have his original DNA until his death, but they did have samples from bin Laden’s family members, and scientists were able to match them up and determine they had their man.

This is called Familial DNA.

In Las Angeles police captured a serial killer dubbed “Grim Sleeper”, based on pulling his sons DNA. Prior to the Grim Sleepers arrest, his son was arrested for an unrelated charge. From that arrest they pulled his DNA, and it was a partial match to the DNA found at the crime scenes of his father decades ago. This is called “familial DNA”, like father/son, mother/daughter or twins.

However the son was obviously much too young to commit the crimes that his father did in the 80’s, so detectives searched out his social network and on a hunch determined his father would more than likely be the closest match to the sons DNA. Based on where dad lived in proximity to the murders, dad fit the killer’s profile.

Detectives followed the father to a pizza restaurant and let him finish up then went in and grabbed a few hunks of crust and a drinking glass and did a DNA test on it and they found their match.

Raise your glass to science!!

Robert Siciliano personal and home security specialist to Home Security Source discussing self defense and rape prevention on NBC Boston. Disclosures.

Taking Responsibility for Personal Security

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The local police generally (for the most part) do not prevent burglaries or assaults. But they do (hopefully) arrest those who perpetrate these crimes. Crime prevention goes way beyond installing a home security system or locking your doors or putting your lights on timers.

Personal security and crime prevention begins with you. It starts with taking responsibility for your little corner of the earth whether at home or on the streets and taking decisive action to prevent being victimized.

Civilized conditioning has impeded our ability to take responsibility.

Civilized conditioning is a double edged sword. On one hand it prevents us from being physical with another person unnecessarily, but on the other hand it prevents us from being physical with another person necessarily to protecting ourselves.

You have been taught all of your life not to hurt another human being and that’s a good thing. From birth we are told to be kind to one another and have manners.

This cultural conditioning allows us to get along in a civilized society but it also puts us in a mode where we do nothing to protect ourselves and think it’s the police that should.

You know bad things happen every day. We are all well aware there are some people out there who are considered un-civilized. These are people who don’t share the same boundaries you and I do. As a result we need to take responsibility.

Invest in a home security system: It’s your responsibility to look out for yourself and your family and make sure your home is safe and secure.

Take a self defense class: There are numerous options to learn self defense in books, videos, online and via local classes.

Teach your kids self defense: A child as young as 5 is perfectly capable of absorbing life saving techniques.

Teach responsibility: It’s not enough to rely on a government or others in authority to protect us. We must invest in ourselves and realizes “if it’s to be, it’s up to me.”

Robert Siciliano personal and home security specialist to Home Security Source

Securing a Home with Automation

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You know how much you love to and rely on controlling your TV from your couch? I’m a little dumfounded when I can’t find the remote. And by the time I do, I could have easily changed the channel and found what I was looking for, but the process just isn’t the same without the remote control. The operative word in “remote control” is “control”.  While remote certainly is the benefit, it is control that adds to the experience.

Let me say this another way. Yes you can stand in front of your TV and switch channels, but you will quickly get bored and settle for something you may not want. Where-as with the remote, you have a whole different level of control that lets you jump around and handle the TV and the entertainment experience in another more satisfactory way. We wonder how people ever functioned without a remote. Actually, that’s easy to answer. There were less than 20 channels. People watched maybe 4 of them. So there weren’t many options. It was easier back then to be content.

Today we have so many functions within our homes that it seems primitive that many don’t have the ability to control them from one place whether remotely or within the home. Automated systems and remote security systems like ADT Pulse™ and ADT Pulse™ for business allow homeowners or operators of a business to control a building’s key functions without even having to be present.

Get control over:

Home Security systems

Video monitoring

Heating and cooling systems

Lights

Automated alerts: your homes automation and home security monitoring can send calls, texts and emails to your mobile or work email letting you know if there’s beam an attempted burglary, or even if a pipe bursts.

Increase your homes security and save time, money and enjoy the conveniences of remotely controlling your home.

Robert Siciliano personal and home security specialist to Home Security Source discussing ADT Pulse™ on Fox News. Disclosures

Teacher Bit by Social Media Identity Theft on Twitter

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Here’s an identity theft story you’ll love to hate.

In Panama City Florida a local and respected teachers’ identity was used to create a fake Twitter profile which spouted off derogatory comments about autistic students. The teacher works with special needs students and had no idea this was going on until she was informed by officials questioning her and the profile.

The Twitter profile included the teachers name, photo, and town along with the derogatory comments. People all over the world started contacting locals officials demanding her ouster after they saw what “she” was writing.

When this came to the attention of the school they immediately brought her in for questioning to determine if she was the author. Their initial questioning led them to believe she was not the author; however they made her bring in her laptop and examined her hard drive for further investigation.

As I’ve said before, identity theft is the only crime I can think of where you are guilty until proven innocent.  Once something like this happens it can quickly and easily damage your reputation.

Online Security Tips:

Right now grab your name on all the popular social media sites. Sign up for every one of them even if you don’t intend on using them. If your name is gone use a hyphen or a dash. For free search over 500 popular social networks and over 200 domain names to instantly secure your brand across the social web at Knowem.com.

Set up Google Alerts to determine of your name is being used online. You want to instantly know if someone is using your name for any reason.

The worst thing you can do is nothing. Sitting back and just letting someone use your name can damage your brand, YOU.

Robert Siciliano personal and home security specialist to Home Security Source discussing social media identity theft on Fox Boston. Disclosures.

Burglars Pose As Doctors, Victims Take Pills

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There is unfortunately no limit to how naïve (and stupid) and vulnerable the public is to the evil (and creative) criminal mind when it comes to home security and burglary.

I haven’t seen reports of this happening in the US, yet, but in Turkey which is somewhere over there, burglars are actually donning white coats, and stethoscopes and knocking on peoples doors to burglarize them. They begin to use a ruse that may involve instantly reducing high blood pressure or another ruse conning the victim into ingesting a heavy sedative knocking them out.

Humans need to be led. Meaning we need leaders such as Presidents, Dictators, Prime Ministers, Generals, Police, Teachers etc. We need authoritarian figures to tell us what to do. Otherwise many of us would be wandering around bumping into walls (visualize that!).

Criminals know that we bow to authority so they pose as police, fire, inspectors, and DOCTORS.

The Turkish police were so alarmed by this trend they set out to test the public with their own “pose as a doctor” scam with a placebo pill in hand and got an astounding 86 percent of people to take the pills!!!

Can you say OMG!?!?

In other parts of Turkey the police tested people at apartment complexes to see what kind of apartment security systems may be in place. Most buildings have some form of intercom with a buzz-in system to let people in. But when the police would randomly select an apartment number and the person responded, the cops would state “I’m a burglar please open the door” Ands of course the police were amazed that every time they tried this, someone at the building would eventually let them in.

Come on people, I’m trying here. Is anyone listening?

Robert Siciliano personal and home security specialist to Home Security Source discussing ADTPulse on Fox News. Disclosures