Your Home Security and Safety is ADT’s Top Priority ADT Security Services Customer Monitoring Centers help protect the people and things you value most, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. With ADT, you are protected by five interconnected command centers strategically located throughout the United States. It is important to understand that most security companies only have one monitoring center, and in some cases, it’s not based in America or even managed by an actual security company. More Than Just Home Protection, We Offer Peace of Mind Fast Alarm Response – When an alarm signal is received, ADT will attempt to contact the homeowner via phone. If the person who answers the phone cannot supply the personal identification code, or if no one answers the phone, the representative then can notify local authorities. Local authorities can be notified to dispatch to the home to determine the cause of the disturbance and to respond to emergency situations. Easy-to-Use Home Security Systems – The keychain remote lets you arm and disarm your ADT monitored home security system with a touch of a button. Low Monthly Monitoring Fees – ADT monitored protection is affordable, and may save you up to 20% on your homeowner’s insurance. 24-Hour Monitoring by ADT Trained Professionals – Knowledgeable home security professionals monitor your home 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from five interconnected command centers. Why Choose ADT for Your Home Security System Monitoring? 131 Years of Experience – ADT Security Services is the largest single provider of electronic security services to more than six million commercial, government and residential customers throughout North America, and has been helping to protect homes for the past 131 years. 24-Hour Monitoring – ADT maintains five interconnected customer monitoring centers throughout the country, to help protect your home and family. ADT can notify both you and the police department, so that your home can be protected whether you’re there or not. ADT’s Customer Monitoring Centers respond to more than 29 million alarm signals each year. Service and Installation – ADT installs more than 80 security systems each hour, or more than one per minute. ADT has more than 6,000 installers and service technicians nationwide.Ease of Use – ADT offers you Wireless Keychain remote access which enables you to arm/disarm your ADT monitored home security system from anywhere in the home. Multi-layer Protection – ADT provides 24-hour alarm monitoring for burglary, as well as the option to moni tor your home for fire detection, video surveillance, access control, critical condition monitoring, health and elder care monitoring, electronic article surveillance, radio frequency identification and integrated systems.
As the popularity of social media networking grows, so do the dangers and consequences. Recently I learned of a very interesting story about a frequent “Tweeter” who had his house subsequently burglarized after a revealing post. The man announced on the social networking service Twitter that he was going to be away from home for a period of time because he was going on vacation. His “Finally going on vacation!” post didn’t just excite him. His Twitter account was configured to also do a status update on his Facebook, which has no shortage of community members willing to share virtually everything about themselves. It hasn’t been proven that there’s a connection between the information he shared with potentially tens of thousands of people. It could be a random event that coincidentally lined up with his updated status on those two popular social networking websites. However, the point wasn’t lost on me that many burglars will stop at nothing to burglarize homes. I have no doubt there are professional burglars taking advantage of naïve people at some of the world’s most popular – and populated – social networking services. In the physical world, there are many things you can do to protect your home against would-be burglars. One of those things is to not advertise that you’re away on vacation. Stop mail and newspaper deliveries while you’re gone. Hire a house sitter if you can. A trusted neighbor or family member will ensure your home looks occupied while away. If you’re going to be gone for an extended period, arrange to have your yard work taken care of in the summer, and snow removal in the winter. These are all things that you can do, or have done for you while you’re away, to make a potential burglar think twice about burglarizing your home. In the online world there are also things you can do to protect you and your family against a variety of potential harm or damage. Keeping a tight rein on your private and personal information is rule number one. The more you divulge about yourself, particularly when the potential for easy access by strangers is higher, as it is on social networking websites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, and a host of others, the better the odds are that you will eventually be targeted for a scam or real world burglar attempt. Teach your kids to not divulge any personal information to strangers on the internet, and to never give out information like family schedules, planned trips or vacations, addresses, phone numbers, places of employment, and information about the physical makeup of the family residence. Children must be taught to never divulge anything about the consumer electronics equipment and other valuable family possessions under any circumstance. This is the information skilled burglars and con artists use to create a profile of a potential victim. An ADT monitored alarm can help protect your home whether you’re there or not. Security experts and ADT representatives want you and your family to be safe in your home, online, and all the times in between. Start taking home security seriously, and burglars will skip your house, opting for an easier target.
Facebook Safety Facebook is an excellent tool to stay in contact with friends and family, and also to meet new people, however we quickly forget an important childhood lesson—”don’t talk to strangers” – “but they are my friends you may say…” As Fb (Facebook) relies on people’s openness to share their information on a semi-public forum, some dilemmas are posed. There is a strong need for humans to be connected to each other and Fb seems to take advantage of that need. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Whether it’s reconnecting with distant relatives or keeping track of close friends without having to duplicate information, or even to see what happened to that high school sweetheart, the strong interconnectivity of the internet cannot be denied or ignored. Thus it is easier to learn to adapt and live with, rather than find ways to live without this valuable tool. The uses of Fb are far reaching. A Cape Town organisation has successfully located numerous missing children by posting their pictures on their group site. The effect that Fb is having on our society is still not clear. In terms of research, Fb is still new and there is currently a large amount of studies being undertaken on various aspects of the impact of Fb. For example, many corporate companies have implemented policies to deal with social networking forums such as Fb, MSN (another social network –Windows Live Messenger) and the like, owing to reduced productivity in the workplace. The current research on the effects of Fb on family life, work and mental health will be interesting. The problem is that research takes time and the publication of these findings too takes time, and Fb is still relatively new. So you have taken the time to create a nice full profile on Fb. You have even included details as to where you live, work, your contact numbers and interests. You then are going on holiday and you post that on your status update something like “Ten days before holiday to Thailand!” The problem is that not only does everyone know that you will be out of town, they also know personal information about you and possibly your family. There would most probably be some pictures of your house on Fb in your photo albums and suddenly you have made it really easy for a would be burglar to have an option here. People even post that they are missing their husband while he is away. This can be a security risk too. Before going head first into the Fb world, I would ask myself some questions: 1. Do I provide personal information and photos etc on my profile? 2. Am I really friends with all the people who have access to my Fb profile? 3. Do I trust the people who can view my profile and its contents? 4. Do I know how to use the security settings on Fb? Who would you let into your home after hours? Who would you let into your home and allow them to look at your videos, photos and weekly plan? The information that you put onto Fb can easily become public and is available 24 hours a day. Information such as where one works, while may be interesting for friends to see, can have a negative effect. The more information that you make available about yourself the more information a would be predator can get. For example, a con-artist could easily get more information about you by pretending to be a close friend when telephoning your business for example. By already having quite a lot of your personal details, it becomes easier to convince your reception or a co-worker for further information, such as your other contact numbers and so on. Now the con-artist could impersonate you when contacting some of your service providers as he/she already has your personal numbers, work numbers, email address and possibly your home address. This is the information that is often used to verify you to your service providers. A con-artist could contact a common service provider such as a telephone company and request that they want to change the postal address details. The operator from the service provider may confirm your address details to the con after he/she has presented other personal information such as birth date, contact numbers and work address. Even if the service provider does not accept the information that the con provided, they will tell him/her what information they require before they will be able to divulge or make changes to your account profile. Thus, the con can contact other service providers and between a few, and with some clever communication can get the missing information. Each service provider asks different security verification details and it is likely that the con will get through to at least one service provider to whom can provide further information, such as your home address. Now you are not only at a financial risk, you may be at physical risk too. Included in this fraud is attempting to predict passwords for example by having personal information about you. A common hacking tool is called “social engineering” whereby a hacker psychologically manipulates situations to gain further information about you to fill in missing gaps that he/she needs to con you. For example, many people use their child’s name as their password on their computer, or their birth date, or any easy to remember information. By creating a trust relationship with you, you may without knowing it, be giving possible passwords/access information to a hacker as he/she attempts to create a psychological profile of you. If you lose your credit card or your identity document, Fb becomes even more unsafe. If the person who finds these personal documents becomes a friend of yours on Fb (or if your profile is open to the public), then the balance of your personal information is available. Cases of fraud regularly occur in the work environment whereby a fellow co-worker is involved in fraudulent activity either directly or indirectly via a partner. In the work environment, information such as identity numbers, home phone numbers and possibly addresses are fairly easily available in many companies. It is also common for co-workers to be friends on Fb, the rest is self-explanatory. The point is that, the more information there is available about you, even more information can be obtained from that very information. Thus, fraudulent activity becomes easier with more information. Phishing (technique of fraudulently obtaining private information) is a common occurrence that takes many forms such as emails from legitimately looking companies attempting to update their database, and requiring you to confirm details via email or telephone for example. The more information there is available about you, the more openings there are for fraudsters to gain entrance into your life. The possibilities are endless and the methods used to con people too are endless. Psychologically deviant behaviour is a concern for public forums. We need to be aware that child friendly websites have been known to attract not only children but paedophiles too. Facebook has a minimum age for membership of 14 years of age. Paedophilia is a concern for young teenagers and I would not rule this out as a concern for parents just because “every one’s child is on Fb and therefore it must be safe”. If this was true then crossing a street would pose no risks as everyone is doing it… . The point is that parental involvement is always important. I am not saying that one needs to be like a hawk, but what I am saying is that teaching your children about the risks and role-playing possible scenarios that they may be faced with, is an important part of any new activity that has risks. For example, the same way a parent needs to oversee a child when learning to swim (and thereafter for many years of swimming), the same applies for internet based activities. Excuses such as my children know more than me and they teach me about computers is a common complaint. It is easy to get advice and that does not mean that you need to be a computer specialist, but as a parent you already have the knowledge of what would be acceptable behaviours for your children, so it’s just the vehicle that you need to adapt to. This can be fun too. Facebook provides a perfect place for voyeuristic behaviour (the sexual interest in or practice of spying on people, usually while they are doing personal actions). Once a Fb user lets another Fb user see his/her profile by accepting a friendship, the profile remains open to each party unless either the friend is removed from the profile (“unfriend”- Oxford word of the year for 2009) or privacy settings are applied. Now if your profile is open to your friends, these friends can view your photos, videos and other information at any time and as many times as they want. This activity goes unnoticed, so if [...]
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When I log onto the computer for the first time each day I have a security feature that tells me if there are issues that need to be addressed. The issue could be something as small as downloading a new update or performing a routine scan. The system can even alert me if an attack on my system has been launched and then prevents it. Every business needs security. For brick and mortar stores that typically means either a security guard and/or motion sensing alarms. For online business it means software solutions that eliminate spyware, adware and multiple viruses. The solutions go further than providing anti-virus protection and firewall features. It may amaze you, but attacks on small businesses are much more prevalent than large businesses. Why? Primarily because the small business owner does not think of themselves as being target worthy. After all, they are small, so the thinking insists a larger business is more desirable for hacking purposes. Larger businesses understand the need for security and hackers have come to recognize that larger businesses do not make attractive targets because they work hard to keep their information secure. Some of the more sophisticated hackers have developed their own software that will continuously scan the Internet to find a vulnerable site. Once discovered, this is the type of site the hacker will explore. If it’s not a big business with multiple safeguards in place then it will be a smaller target that is more vulnerable. With the wide acceptance of lap top computers in wi-fi hot zones there is a lot of business being done on the go. However, in a wi-fi hot zone the signal for your computer (and its contents) is not sent via a protected line, but by radio waves. These waves can be much easier to intercept and used to a hacker’s advantage. A VPN (Virtual Private Network) connection can help secure your on-the-go business correspondence and transactions. Many motels and hotels provide free Internet connections (usually wi-fi) so be careful using this as well. Interestingly there are some motels that provide an Internet based computer for their guests to use. Many times that computer is in a common area where anyone can view what you are looking at. Most motels do provide a system that seeks to erase any sites you have visited for your protection, but you should be careful if others can observe the sites or password keystrokes you may be using. This may sound a little like a James Bond movie and it may seem as though this article is designed with scare tactics in mind, but when it comes to the security of your business and related transactions you should always err on the side of caution. It takes just one active hacking to damage your computer and potentially compromise the interests of past and present customers. Those customers deserve to have their information guarded and simple online precautions and applicable software can be very helpful in curbing potential problems while maintaining the greatest possible up time.
