Over the years I’ve had a load of stuff stolen and almost always purely due to being too lazy to take any good security measures. From audio equipment in a badly locked shed to half a car, it’s safe to say I’ve seen exactly the lengths to which thieves are willing to go just to make a little bit of cash.
Don’t worry, I will tell the story of how half my mum’s car got nicked later on in this post 🤣.
As much as this has obviously been hugely irritating and has cost far more money than a set of security cameras, I did realise that I’ve learned a lot of lessons around burglar-proofing your property the hard way, which has given me exactly the experience I needed to start this blog!
My aim is to help my readers make sensible, small changes to their home, car and other property to help secure it against thieves. There’s a common saying:
“buy nice or buy twice”.
I’ve actually found in Britain, a more appropriate (yet less catchy) saying is:
“buy nice and buy twice, if you don’t have good security”.
So anyway, that’s what qualifies me to speak on home security. Now onto the story of how my mum went outside one day to find half a car left, and a quick tip to avoid this happening to you.
This happened at least 15 years ago. My mum, who didn’t have a huge amount of money at the time, was looking for a cheap body shop nearby to do some work on her car, I think it was a Ford Mondeo. She rang up three different shops for quotes.
Two of them asked for the car model and her number, and said they would get back to her. The third one asked for the car model and her number. What they also asked however, is what colour it was and what her home address was. This isn’t exactly enough to raise suspicion, because it is the sort of thing that a business like this could legitimately ask. She handed over the details over the phone.
No more than 48 hours later, she walked down to her car to drop me off to school. On autopilot since it was early in the morning, she sat down in the car, not realising for a brief moment that she hadn’t needed to open the door to get in. That’s because the door had been taken off. And the other door. And half the interior. And the back bumper. And the front bumper.
What had clearly happened is the body shop wanted to sort out another client’s Mondeo on the cheap, and there was a perfect donor car at the address my mum gave them.
Of course, we rang the police and told them exactly who it was who had clearly nicked all the bits off her car. The police weren’t particularly interested, which won’t be surprising to anyone who has had things stolen before. Nothing happened. They didn’t ever follow up.
If that’s what happens when your car (or at least half of it) is stolen and you know exactly who did it, no wonder a vast majority of car thefts have no suspects.
That’s when I started to realise you’re on your own when it comes to theft in the UK. The police just don’t have the time or energy to investigate anything except the most egregious crimes. The only way you’ll ever see your stuff again is to not have it stolen in the first place.
Anyway, fast forward to today. I’ve made a lot of adjustments in terms of security measures for many aspects of my life, and I hope passing these recommendations on will help as many Brits as possible.
My brother and I are both software developers and my dad is in IT security, meaning we have a pretty firm understanding of the internet side of things too. Staying secure and safe on the internet is no easy task, and sometimes it feels like everyone is out to get you. I’m yet to write any articles about home IT security, but this is definitely in the works. Staying safe in an internet connected world is becoming increasingly more difficult, with the new era of internet connected smart devices taking over all aspects of everyone’s lives.
So there you have it! SmartSafeHome is a security-focused blog, with the aim of helping the UK to stay safer and smarter in both the real world and online. Over the coming months and years, I want to cover just about every important aspect of personal security, from areas as small as preventing someone stealing your bins to as big as securing yourself against bank fraud and identity theft.
Thanks for reading, I hope this site will help you to create a more safe and secure environment Awin.