Home Security: Urgent summer holiday appeal from criminals!
You are excited to go on holiday and criminals are pleased to see you go too…
A message from criminals… Please advertise your holiday plans on social media, what we really want is photos and messages of you packing your bags, selfies in the car or drinks in the airport about to depart on holiday with details like “looking forward to 2 weeks in the sun”. This gives us a really helpful timescale when to burgle your house.
Don’t worry about providing your address, your profile will normally give us enough information to get that from the phone book or electoral roll. However, if you have a few nice photos of your house on your social media it will enable us to plan our burglary in advance, scope out entry points, security and valuables. If you forget to post about your departure and return dates a few nice images whilst you are away is better than nothing.
This appeal is not just on behalf of old-school burglars, modern cyber criminals also want you to share your lives publicly. We will use the details you put on your profile and posts to collate the details we need; things like dates of birth, workplace, family members, etc which can be weaved together to get the details of your life to commit fraud and cyber-crime. This is especially useful if we want to make a targeted attack against you, your business or your contacts because this is the method some of the most successful cyber gangs use to make their millions.
TOP TIPS for helping criminals this summer include:
- Don’t wait until you are back from holiday before posting your holiday photos.
- Make sure you let everyone know how long you are away for.
- Remember to fill in your profile with as many personal details as possible.
- Share photos of expensive purchases and gifts.
- Criminals want to know your date of birth so don’t be shy.
- Don’t restrict who can view your posts and profile to just the people you know, share it with strangers too.
However, if you don’t want to help criminals and want a stress free summer please contact Sutcliffe & Co Insurance Brokers, who can advise you on a wide range of risk management topics as well as satisfying your insurance needs. Call us today on 01905 21681 or email Enquiries@sutcliffeinsurance.co.uk