3 ms·

I spent a brief time selling burglar alarms door to door. I can tell you that on any given street, even in a high crime area, several of the houses won't have a

by ZoFreX 14y ago

I spent a brief time selling burglar alarms door to door. I can tell you that on any given street, even in a high crime area, several of the houses won't have alarms. They won't have fake alarms, siren boxes, stickers, nothing except the neighbourhood watch sticker. Why would a thief spend even five seconds looking up your alarm model? They don't "case the joint", they hit every house on the street that has no-one in at the time they're there, and they move on. One trick I've heard of that would defeat a fake alarm (or a bad alarm, which is 90% of them) is to throw a brick through the window, cheese it, and see if anyone turns up 10 minutes later. If not you're good to go, regardless of whether or not the alarm is going off.

larrys 14y ago
"Why would a thief spend even five seconds looking up your alarm model?" The product (by way of the video) seems to be for commercial businesses that have a problem with break-ins because they have things that people repeatedly find profitable to steal. So I don't think it's the same situation as residential burglar alarms.
omh 14y ago
One trick I've heard of that would defeat a fake alarm (or a bad alarm, which is 90% of them) is to throw a brick through the window, cheese it, and see if anyone turns up 10 minutes later. If not you're good to go, regardless of whether or not the alarm is going off. But what happens if the alarm does go off? Once you've done this a 4 or 5 times you may find a house without an alarm, but there are 3 or 4 nearby houses with suspicious people and probably policemen checking things out.
- ZoFreX 14y ago
  > But what happens if the alarm does go off? I wake up, curse, and go back to sleep, and so does every other person on the street. This attack isn't about finding if a house has an alarm, it's about finding out if anyone cares if the alarm goes off. In most cases, no-one does. If you ring the police in this country (UK) and tell them an alarm is going off, they won't go to the call. There are just too many false alarms! They will however go if you actually spot someone on the property (and in my experience are pretty prompt about that), and they will go if your alarm is a suitable certified one (in which case, it's much less likely to go off {it requires both an entrance alarm trigger AND a motion alarm trigger to activate} and would have a direct phoneline to the police and/or private security company).

by ZoFreX 14y ago

larrys 14y ago

"Why would a thief spend even five seconds looking up your alarm model?" The product (by way of the video) seems to be for commercial businesses that have a problem with break-ins because they have things that people repeatedly find profitable to steal. So I don't think it's the same situation as residential burglar alarms.

omh 14y ago

One trick I've heard of that would defeat a fake alarm (or a bad alarm, which is 90% of them) is to throw a brick through the window, cheese it, and see if anyone turns up 10 minutes later. If not you're good to go, regardless of whether or not the alarm is going off. But what happens if the alarm does go off? Once you've done this a 4 or 5 times you may find a house without an alarm, but there are 3 or 4 nearby houses with suspicious people and probably policemen checking things out.

ZoFreX 14y ago
> But what happens if the alarm does go off? I wake up, curse, and go back to sleep, and so does every other person on the street. This attack isn't about finding if a house has an alarm, it's about finding out if anyone cares if the alarm goes off. In most cases, no-one does. If you ring the police in this country (UK) and tell them an alarm is going off, they won't go to the call. There are just too many false alarms! They will however go if you actually spot someone on the property (and in my experience are pretty prompt about that), and they will go if your alarm is a suitable certified one (in which case, it's much less likely to go off {it requires both an entrance alarm trigger AND a motion alarm trigger to activate} and would have a direct phoneline to the police and/or private security company).