★ How To Prevent Home Invasions (10 VITAL Tips – Do These NOW!) ★

★ How To Prevent Home Invasions (10 VITAL Tips – Do These NOW!) ★
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This is a quick “Top 10” tutorial to get you thinking. For a FAR more detailed and thorough home security tutorial, check out my book Ultimate Home Defense.

Introduction: We unfortunately live in an era where scams, burglaries, home invasions and other crimes are rampant. The majority of this crime is opportunistic by nature and looks for targets that are a) soft b) juicy-looking. Be neither of those things: Here are 10 steps to protect your home against one of the most dangerous and terrifying forms of attack – home invasions.

1) Address Invisibility:

People think of internet crime as something that happens to internet users – however even “real world” crime also often starts online nowadays – via internet research.

The simple reality is that it is “too easy” for random people to learn far too much about your address via online research – unless you take steps to limit and remove this information from the web.

a) First, Google search your address online and see what comes up. Learn about information removal and do what you can to have it removed from other places online where it can be “scoped out”.

b) One important one factor to address is Google Maps: Anyone can look at Google Maps and investigate a property; potentially sizing it up as a target. Get your property blurred from Google Maps (just do a search online “How to Blur Your House on Google Maps” – there are numerous tutorials).

c) Use a P.O. Box for your mailing address and delink your name from your physical address wherever legally possible.

d) Obfuscate your location in social media and other internet profiles. Unless you are legally required to use your actual address, be vague – enter a nearby town or county; and then only let someone actually know your exact location when it is necessary and that person is regarded as “trusted”.

2) Downplay Visible Wealth

Many people mistakenly assume that visually signalling “Look at me, I’m rich” is going to win you admiration – however it can often stir up darker emotions in onlookers. Some will automatically resent a person who has what they don’t – and others will simply try to take it, if they can! The rule here is simple: What they cannot see and do not know exists, they cannot desire to own… so keep your wealth private as far as possible and resist the temptation to look flash. Why announce that you are a loaded galleon? Don’t do it.

3) Information Management

Curate not only appearances, but also the information that is known about you by your social circle and others. If “the wrong person” learns that you are wealthy, that could start a chain reaction of events you don’t want. So, don’t talk about it. Be vague, opaque – and misinform, where appropriate: You must of course inform the gov of your financials, but as the saying goes “Only your accountant should know” and they are of course bound by client confidentiality policies to not reveal this information. As for everyone else – it’s safer by far if they simply don’t know about your wealth.

If it’s known that you “hit the big time” at some point in the past, counter this with believable stories about how it’s all spent (easily done) or you lost it on a crypto crash. Yes, you are going to have to bear the brunt of people thinking you are a bit stupid, but that is way preferable to people thinking you are a juicy target to be scammed – isn’t it? Put some fog around your financial status and keep it that way.

Another important aspect is to clean up your social media: It’s become fashionable to “flex” on social media – but do you really want any stranger – including criminals – observing “this person has money” and starting to consider you as a target? Better that they simply do not know. There are numerous stories of well known influencers being targeted by criminals because of displays of wealth on Instagram etc.

4) Install Perimeter Signals

Now onto the property itself! Let’s start with the outermost layer: You should ideally have some type of surveillance / detectors that alert you the moment someone has come onto your property, or ideally even before they have come onto the property…

I have “i-beam” infrared detectors at my property boundaries and they send me an alarm signal when the beam is crossed. It’s literally impossible for a car to drive into my driveway or a peron to go through the gate without me being notified. These are inexpensive but require wiring and connection to some form of notification system – which could either be for example a beeper or a push notification, which would then prompt you to look at your CCTV monitor.

It’s quite amazing what you learn when you have such a setup. Not only are these i-beams a visual deterrent that shows you take security seriously, but anyone snooping around in the dark has blown their cover without them knowing that you know they are there (and that law enforcement is already on the way!)

You can also easily obtain inexpensive gate alarms that have an electromagnetic contact that sends a signal when the gate is opened.

A motion sensor can be connected to an exterior light, a high-powered floodlight, an alarm, a beeper inside the house or a notification messaging system. Some systems are wireless, enabling them to be placed adjacent to property gates or driveways, sending a signal to the receiver, which is either in or attached to the house. The transmitter may also be solar-powered.

Perimeter signals buy you time and this is especially valuable in home invasion type scenarios, which are typically of the “lightning raid” format: They use speed, brute force, numbers and intimidation but aim to be gone quickly. Having that extra 30 seconds to make that emergency call and slam all the deadbolts and door braces into position before they attack your doors, could literally be a lifesaver.

5) Cameras

Cameras are a fantastic visible deterrent (one of the best), plus they alert you to the presence of intruders. They have the added benefit that you can see who is at the door without opening the door, which is excellent. If it is someone you don’t want to deal with, you simply don’t have to open the door – and if it is someone you do want to deal with, you can make sure you don’t miss them.

My property has been fully “camera’ed up” for several years and I love being able to see what’s going on outside. Fun for wildlife watching too – I’ve seen owls, deer and other animals I would not otherwise have known were there.

One thing to note is that the motion detectors can get annoying – if you are getting notifications from every moth or bird that flies past the camera – and many people decide to disable them. For some reason also, spiders love cameras – is it the infrared light? – and require ongoing cleaning of webs. Note that cameras should ideally be installed “above reachable height” to make it difficult for someone to interfere with them.

Use cameras in conjunction with ibeam detectors so that you can be notified when someone crosses the beam and then take a look to see who’s there: You are not going to be glued to the monitors all day and so getting a beep is really useful as it allows you to look at the CCTV monitor and see who’s there…

6) Signage

The primary purpose of signage is to notify would-be intruders that the owners are of the highly vigilant type, and that there are active countermeasures. The main goal of signage is to deter them from making an attempt on your property.

Deterrent signage might for example notify potential intruders that you are armed (where legal), that trespassing is forbidden, that you are combat trained and that you will use deadly force (where legal). All of these stickers can be obtained on Amazon or other websites.

Surveillance signage can notify potential attackers that 24/7 camera surveillance is in operation and that vehicles have GPS tracking.

7) Beef Up Your Exterior Doors To The MAX

The vast majority of home attacks target the doors. Home invasions typically rely on brute force and speed to breach the door, swarm in, hold the occupants hostage and then ransack the place quickly.

The whole thing fails if they simply cannot get in. Your best defense is therefore to make sure that they simply cannot break down the door!

The entire door system can be improved – the material of the door, the lock and the framing. Security doors can get expensive, however can “start with what you’ve got” and make very significant improvements such as adding extra deadbolts and door braces – so that when you are at home it is extremely difficult to break down the door. High security strike plates can be obtained that run the full length of the jamb, making kicking in the door far more difficult. Hinge security pins make hinge attacks (i.e. the Halligan bar + sledge attack) far more difficult.

8) Internal Doors

So imagine the situation: Your front door is hardened. It took them some time, but they were able to break through it. Then what?

Will they just run through the house freely and find you?

Ideally, you want there to be another hardened door – or even several! Standard interior doors are cheap, flimsy and would only last one good kick or wrecking bar strike.

That doesn’t have to be the case at all! There are many things you can do to beef up your interior doors. It makes logical sense – and your home has now become a difficult obstacle course for any intruder. Preventing them from running freely through the house also limits their choice of exits – placing them in a situation that is highly undesirable for them as they may be more easily trapped!

High security interior doors are an amazing home security “secret weapon” that gives huge advantages – in addition to being unexpected.

High security buildings since ancient times have used systems of “concentric layers”. If the outer layer is breached, there is another inner sanctum that is highly defended, and then another beyond that.

If they had to attack 2, 3 or more hardened doors before they get to you – that could buy you enough minutes that either they give up or law enforcement arrives. So give very serious consideration to your interior doors, they absolutely can be a lifesaver!

9) Keys In The Wild

Where are all the keys to your house, right now? Do you even know?

It is always advised to change the locks when you move into a property – because you simply don’t know who else might have a key. The previous occupant might (or might not!) have been completely trustworthy… but you simply don’t know anything at all about their key control, or the lack of it.

To take a simple example: They might have left a key “under the flower pot”. Completely unknown to them, someone else might have “borrowed” this key one day when they were out, cloned it and then put it back. And now some totally random person has a key to the front door and drives past every day, learning your habits, just waiting for you to be gone for the weekend……

Just one example of MANY potential ways there could be “keys in the wild”.

Two main steps here: 1) change the locks. Fit high security. Keep the old locks so that you can put them back on when you move out and take your super nice expensive locks with you (or just sell them on ebay and get your money back!!) 😉 2) Do not leave any keys laying around / visible. Leave all keys locked in the safe or other place where nobody can see them.

10) Window Security

Most people leave at least one window open, much of the time. Actually close and lock the windows before you go out and double check that this is done each time, rather than “assuming”! A classic technique used to gain unauthorized access to buildings is that the thief will enter – legally – during the day and leave a window unlatched, but seemingly closed; this window can then easily be opened from the outside and they are in… so depending on whether unknown person have had building access, make sure the windows are actually properly closed and if something is mysteriously different to how it was, be on guard.

Another tip – make sure that no ladders are left outside the house. Ideally, your community should follow the same protocol – how many homes have been broken into because a ladder was taken from outside one property (“but we lock our windows so who cares”) and used to get into the upstairs window of the house next door that has an upstairs window open (“we don’t have a ladder so who cares”)!!

You see how much of security is about actually thinking it through and making sure you prevent the obvious…

FINAL PRO TIP: ACTUALLY USE The Security You Already Have!

Would you be able to break into your own home right now? If so, it’s not secure enough!

There’s no point in having the best locks in the world… if you don’t actually use them! One of the BIGGEST flaws in most people’s home defense is simply that they don’t even lock the house, close the gate – or leave an upstairs window open.

How many of your doors are unlocked right now? How many of your windows are open right now? Are your security cameras even switched on?

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, living in the countryside, my Dad did not even bother to lock our house. It shows how much better things were “in the old days” – but that also reflects the way things were post-WW2, when there was a strong sense that if you were on our soil, then you are “one of us” and therefore the level of overall trust was higher.

It’s not like that any more. My Dad’s house got broken into in the 1990s. Ironically, the thieves did not even try the unlocked front door! They punched out a glass window in a back door and then on the way out of the front door they unlocked the door using the key that was left in the lock. They did not even know that the front door was unlocked – until they went to leave! We had a dog too, and no doubt the thief was ready to hurt the dog – but our dog was the kind of dog who was so friendly that he was probably wagging his tail furiously and the thief thought ‘ohh sweet dog is totally harmless lol’ and so the dog was unharmed and no doubt just wanted to be petted – or fed. Absolutely useless for security. I would imagine that most housebreakers carry dog treats nowadays. Give the dog food and you are a friend for life. Anyway the thief made off with jewelry, credit cards and cash – the usual type of stuff. Small, valuable, easy to run with and easy to turn around.

You would be amazed if only you knew how many times your car door was tried by an opportunist thief… whose stragegy would be to try 1000 car doors until they find the one that opens.

I once forgot to lock my car door in a parking garage. No broken glass. No signs of entry. I just got back to the garage and didn’t notice anything amiss. It took me a few minutes to realize that my glasses were gone and the coins from the central storage compartment were cleaned out.

This is how a lot of crimes are done. Yes, there are those crimes where the door is lying in pieces on the ground. But there are many where nobody even realizes a crime was committed…

Think about it. If you leave your house unlocked and a thief discovers that fact… what will they do? You might think they will clean the house out… but then they know you will lock the door. They might opt to enter numerous times, each time taking a bit of cash or something of small value. Most people don’t count the cash in their wallet…. If someone took a 20 from the wad and then put it back right where they found it… or raided the fridge (thieves are often simply hungry!)… would you even know? They might have an entire round of places they know they can go for a snack and a few dollars!

Use the security you have. And don’t leave keys visible in the house. What if someone were to take one, have a copy made and then replace the original? You would have no idea that someone even had a key to your house… not good…

This was a simplified “Top 10” tutorial to get you thinking. For a FAR more detailed and thorough home security tutorial, check out my book Ultimate Home Defense.