Since we already have minor thread necromancy and a little thread drift, I'll add a small home defense tip.ninemm wrote:The BEST anti-theft device is a garage.
The majority of us who own homes probably have a garage-door opener attached to a common and standard roll-up garage door. Take a look at yours. It's likely it has a red-handled pull-cord attached to the runner near the door.
This is a release lever that allows the runner to easily disengage from the opener's track. If the garage door opener ever fails to operate, you pull this cord and the runner is freed from the track, allowing you to open the garage door manually.
Thing is, almost all mid-line garage doors with openers have this release, the tracks are always in the middle of the door, and almost all are constructed with accessible gaps at the top of the door-frame interface. These things aren't hermetically sealed, after all.
It ain't difficult--and in fact it's pretty quick--to slip an implement in the gap, hook the cord and handle, and pop the release. Voila!
Unless you routinely engage the bar-lock on your garage door--and who with a garage door opener does--unwanted entry is more accessible than you might think.
The easy solution to improve security? Just remove the plastic handle on the pull-cord. It takes very little pressure to release the runner; you don't need the handle to do it. So just make sure the cord is smooth and can't be hooked by an implement fishing for it from the outside.
Now back to your regularly scheduled Topic...