Why You Shouldn’t Break Into Your Own Car or Home

You've locked your keys in your car or lost the key to your house. You feel a bit desperate and you just want to get into your car or home. When this happens, call a Chicago locksmith before you try to break into your car or home.

Breaking into your car or home is dangerous. It can cause suspicion, damage and many other issues. Here are some of the main reasons you should never try to break into your own car or home.

Injury

If you try to break into your car, it could lead to serious injury. Maybe you think a broken window isn't that big of a deal to fix and you really want into the car. However, when you break that window, the process backfires and you end up cut badly. Even if you don't decide to break the window, trying to break into your own car could lead to injury.

The same goes for your home. Often, breaking into your own home means you're trying to climb into a window, which can be dangerous. You could fall on something inside or outside or hurt yourself in the process. Or, even if you think it goes smoothly you could later cut yourself on the glass you didn’t see in the creases of your car seat.

Damage your Car or Home

One of the main reasons you should never try to break into your own car or home is the damage you can cause. Often, calling a Chicago locksmith is cheaper than replacing a window or other damage you could cause. You may bend a door the wrong way; break a lock on a home window or something else. If you damage the mechanism that locks the window or door, you could spend much more to fix it instead of just calling a locksmith to help you into your vehicle or home.

Cause Legal Issues

If a police vehicle drives by during your attempted break-in, they won't know you own the home or car. They will likely suspect you are a thief and could arrest you for trying to break into your own car or home. Worst case scenario, they question you and the stress of the situation gets to you. This causes you to fight with the police, which could lead to legal issues.

You Could Make Yourself a Target of Crime

When you're desperate to get into your vehicle or home, you may not notice the person that has been watching you and comes up behind you with a gun. The next thing you know, you've become a victim of a crime because you were too busy trying to break into your car or home. Even worse, the thief could break into your car for you and take off with it.

If you're in an unsafe area or it's late at night, don't risk it. Call a Chicago locksmith instead and let a professional handle the job.

There are many things that could happen if you try to break into your own car or home. Most of them are not good. It's better to trust a professional locksmith and it will cost much less than the damage or injury you could cause trying to do it yourself.

Top Items You Should Keep In a Household Safe

You may already have a safety deposit box at your bank for valuable items, but should you put all of your eggs in one basket? The problem with your bank’s safety deposit box is that these are usually not insured while your home’s safe would likely be covered under your homeowner’s insurance. Plus, keeping cash in a safe means that your cash wouldn’t be insured either.

That’s why a household safe is the best way to go for things like cash, valuables, important documents, and family photos. You can’t access your bank safety deposit box outside of business hours or in the event of death without proper court papers from your estate representative. If you’re wondering what items make the most sense to keep at home, take a look below for your guide on what to keep in a household safe.

Social Security Cards, Passports and Birth Certificates

One of the first things you’ll likely want to secure into your household safe is your important identification. This includes your original social security cards, original birth certificates, and your passports. These are all items that are hard to replace and something you’ll need to travel, get social security benefits, or apply for things like marriage certificates. Make sure to keep these important items safe that identify you and your family, while being hard to replace if they were to get destroyed or lost.

Insurance, Financials, and Contact Info

Next, you’ll want to secure your financial house, your insurance paperwork, and contact information. Put your homeowners insurance and any other policies in here so that in the event of an emergency, you’ll be able to more easily contact your agent and file a claim. Financial paperwork like taxes, debts, stocks and bonds, deeds and titles, and investments, retirement plan, and bank accounts should all go in the safe.

Anything that covers your financial house should be protected so that you can protect your credit, keep tabs on your finances, not have to try to replace these important items. Having contact information for your insurance agents, outstanding debts, emergency contacts, and family members will make emergencies much less stressful as you’ll have the information and documents all protected.

Legal Documents

Speaking of documents, you’ll want to make sure you’ve added legal documents to your safe, such as any power of attorneys, your will, and marriage and death certificates. Legal documents like these should always be kept to ensure you protect yourself and that they can be found in the event of an emergency that requires your living will or information on your power of attorney.

Digital copy of family photos

Don’t forget sentimental items when you set up your safe. Keep digital media in here for your family photos, an inventory of the house, and files that you want to keep from a criminal. You can also keep family heirlooms and other irreplaceable, sentimental items in here.

Cash and firearms

Don’t forget to keep some cash in your safe since you don’t want to keep this in your safety deposit box. This is for an emergency situation in which you don’t want to worry about ATM limits, but also not keeping too much and risking theft. You’ll also want to keep your firearms in a safe since those are often targeted items and are rarely recovered. These are also important to keep in a safe when not in use for the safety of your family.

Lastly, make sure you’ve put items in your safe into waterproof bags to ensure their protection against water damage. Keeping these items in a waterproof, fireproof, and criminal proof household safe will put your mind at ease that your most important family possessions are protected in the event of an emergency. 

Make sure you contact The Professional Locksmith for any Chicago Safe Installation needs!

5 Security Tips for Moving into a New Home

Moving into a new home comes with a lot of new responsibilities, but the first one should be your home’s security. Having a secure home means having a more secure life and not worrying about your family’s safety. You want to protect this investment you’ve made, your valuables inside the home, and the people you share the home with which is why you need to learn a few security tips for the move in.

With burglaries occurring mostly in residential properties more than any other type in the US, it’s important to be ready before anything can happen. Use these five tips for securing your new home.

Secure your doors and windows

Start by securing doors and windows since many times burglaries happen through these access points. You’ll want to inspect your doors to ensure strong frames and protected hinges. If the wood is hollow or you have a mail slot in the door, you may want to consider a replacement door since it may be easy to break down or reach through and unlock.

Install a latch guard, peephole, or additional deadbolt on your front door and then work on replacing the window latches with locks or key-operated levers. Swapping out tempered or laminated glass to a stronger material will help with home security as well.

Get to know the neighbors

One of the easiest ways to stay safer is to meet your neighbors and build a relationship that will motivate one another to keep an eye out on the neighborhood. Your neighbors can help keep an eye on your home when you’re away to look for suspicious activity, but only if they know you and your routines. You can do the same for them to help keep the neighborhood a little bit safer.

Install a security system

You’ll definitely want to work with a professional in your area to install a security system. They will be able to help you put cameras up and point them in the perfect places to monitor, set you up with a motion sensor, and make suggestions on the type of security measures to have for your home.

Light up landscaping and add signs

Head out to the front and back lawn to work on lighting up the house better at night with landscape lighting. Many times a lit-up home with landscape lighting throughout is not going to be a theft target like a darker home with hiding spots would.

You can install motion sensor lighting if you don’t want to leave it on all night. Then put signs up around the house to show that you have a security system inside so that any burglars trying to break in during the day while you’re away will want to go elsewhere knowing that an alarm may go off.

Attempt to break-in yourself

Lastly, stay safe by trying to break into your home to look for vulnerabilities. You can even ask a friend to try to break in to see if they find places around the home that you may not have thought to secure. It will help you to determine what you can see through the curtains from inside, what valuables you’ve left unattended outside, and what areas are easy to access or hiding spots.

Don’t be a victim of a burglary in your new home due to neglecting some safety precautions. Use these tips to secure up your new home so that you can breathe easier during the day and throughout the night.

What to look for in a home safe

Have you been looking for a way to protect some of the most precious items in your home, like old family photos, expensive jewelry, and important documents like birth certificates? A home safe may be the perfect solution for you to keep items that you want to protect from a fire or other disaster, especially when it comes to a priceless heirloom or family photos.

You can use a safe for a more secure location to store things like your will, car titles, sensitive computer data, and passports so that in the event of a flood, fire, or burglary, you can ensure these items will likely go untouched. Take a look at what you should be looking for in a home safe.

What to consider before buying a safe

First, you’ll want to consider a few points before making your safe purchase. Things like size, features, and use are important to know before getting a safe for the home.

Do you want a safe with fire protection, water protection, and theft protection, or are you only concerned with one of these areas? What items will you be keeping in the safe? You’ll need to know this so that you can choose the correct size.

Where in the home will the safe need to go? This will affect the safe type, whether it’s a wall safe or floor safe.  Consider the size you’ll need, the budget you can afford, the location, and the elements of protection you want in a safe.  Then talk to your professional locksmith about safe installation to get it bolted down in the home so that a burglar can’t walk off with it.  

Types of safes

There are a variety of safe types that you’ll want to consider for your needs. Most people like to have a fireproof or water resistant safe in the home in the event of fire or flooding, but there are other specialty safes that could be beneficial to you, like a jewelry safe, data safe, burglary safe, and gun safe. They can range from anywhere as low as $25 to a few hundred dollars.

Since you’ll want to store documents that are easy to grab in an emergency or important enough that they shouldn’t just be left out, you’ll want to get something that can hold everything from your passports to your tax returns. Get one big enough to store the following:

• “power of attorney” document

• insurance policies

• social security cards

• a copy of your will, deeds

• emergency cash

• camera negatives

• anything of value!

You’ll want one that can also store important collections like baseball cards or stamps that are irreplaceable. Valuable items like tape recordings or flash drives, engagement rings, computer data, and family heirlooms here need to go here as well. You’d be smart to keep a photo or video inventory of the home in here.

Look for a low UL rating on the safe since the lower the number, the better protection from fire, and be sure to place items into resealable plastic bags to help prevent water damage. You can choose between a dial lock like a school locker would have or a digital lock like you’d see in hotel safes. A safe on the ground can handle more weight and be bolted down while a wall safe is going to hold less weight.

A jewelry safe may make sense in your bedroom closet but a burglar would probably never look for your jewelry in a basement, so the location of the safe is an important decision. While fire is the most common reason for a loss of assets, burglary and water damage follow, making fire protection the most important element in your decision for a safe.

A burglary safe will have a harder lock to pick and more weight to deter a home invader. Consider where in the home you are most likely to have a burglar invade, where you are likely to see flooding, and where you are likely to still be able to access the items without too much trouble.

If you were to lose everything in your home, what would be the most devastating thing to lose? Consider getting a safe for your home to protect those items that would hurt the most to lose. In the event of an emergency, you can focus on your family’s safety knowing that those irreplaceable items are already stowed away in that home safe.

How To Improve Your Front Door Security

Are you worried about someone breaking into your home? Do you have an older lock on your front door or does your front door lock need to be repaired? Hiring a residential locksmith to ensure you have the best front door security can go a long way to giving you the peace of mind you desire. Here are a few of the best ways you can improve front door security.

Choose the Right Lock/Door Knob

Most door hardware is installed into a hole that is created within the door. This hole weakens the door and becomes a target of those looking to break in. You can combat this issue by using a metal door-and-lock reinforcer. This type of product is made of brass, stainless steel, iron or another strong metal.

In addition, you need a good lock cylinder and a good door knob or handle. You don't want something cheaply made and easy to destroy. Burglars will often try to pick the lock, drill it, bump it or use another trick to get past your lock cylinder. Choosing the right lock and lock hardware goes a long way to improving the security of your front door.

Install Inward Facing Door Hinges

Another area of your front door vulnerable to break-ins are the hinges. There are two types of hinges used on doors: inward facing and outward facing. By installing inward facing door hinges, you will make the hinges inaccessible to a criminal trying to break in.

In addition, you can add a few other components to the hinges of your front door to ensure it's secure. Enhanced security studs, 3-inch set screws and corrugated pins make it much more difficult to break in by compromising the hinges.

Add a Strike Plate

Using a strike plate on the front door gives you a more reinforced area making it more secure. However, if this plate isn't installed correctly, it can make your front door less secure. With a properly-installed strike plate, it's much more difficult for an intruder to break down your front door. Make sure to have your strike plate professionally installed with longer screws.

Use a Solid Wood or Metal Door

Sometimes, homes are created with hollow core front doors. These doors are not nearly as secure as a solid wood or metal door. A solid door will be a bit more expensive, but it's incredibly secure compared to a hollow core door.

Add a Camera and Motion Sensor Lighting

The final step to improving your front door security is to add a camera and a motion sensor light. The light will scare off many burglars before they get close enough to even try to break in. The presence of a camera also helps to ensure burglars won't break in because they will be caught red-handed.

If you want to secure your front door and gain the peace of mind you deserve, use the above tips. Make sure to hire a professional locksmith to install everything you need to gain better front door security.

Prevent Garage Break-Ins with the Correct Garage Door Locks

If you’ve ever worried about a garage break-in or have experienced one yourself, you know that this can be a challenging situation in the protection of your home. It’s an important aspect to keeping your home safe and often times people will leave the door unlocked from the garage to the home assuming that their garage is secure.

Unfortunately, standard garage door locks aren’t very secure and are easy to be bypassed by a criminal. Take a look at how you can prevent a garage break-in by updating to one of these correct garage door locks.

Garage door locks

There are a few different garage door lock types you can choose from with electronic options bringing new technology into garage door safety. You’ll find the most popular options that most homeowners are choosing now include electronically-operated locks, a garage door deadbolt, and a keyless digital lock.

Garage door deadbolts are great for those that prefer to leave technology out of the picture and just use a good old-fashioned deadbolt lock. You can get a single cylinder or a double cylinder; both options being great for deterring criminals from being able to break in. A single cylinder works by operating a knob from the inside while requiring a key from the outside. The double cylinder option would require a key from both sides of the door.

Electronic locks

If you like the idea of using technology in your lock, choose an electronically-operated lock that require fingerprint activation. These are great because criminals can’t possible have a copy of that to break in and they would likely see your house as not worth the hassle.

You can program any fingerprints you want to be able to access the garage door. The only downside is that you’ll lose the convenience of hitting the button from your car and entering your garage in a jiff, but you’ll have an added safety measure that can’t be matched.

Keyless digital locks

Lastly, a keyless digital lock is a similar option to your electronic lock option, but with a higher tech operation. You’ll use a digital keypad in this scenario where you enter a code of your choosing to gain access. These are difficult to break into compared to a regular garage door lock and you’ll likely be able to get a warranty in the event that an intruder damaged it trying to break in.

Garage door home safety tips

The first tip to having better security for your home is to change your older garage door lock into one of these new options. Your traditional garage door lock is not very secure but your local professional locksmith can upgrade it for you in not time.

If you choose a lock that comes with a garage door remote, be sure to avoid putting it in your vehicle and having it on display since an intruder could break into your car and open up the garage that way. A keychain remote opener is a better alternative since it stays with your keys.

Despite the update security, you’ll want to secure the door into your house from the garage like you would your front door. Don’t leave the garage door open and cover up garage windows. Despite having a more secure home, an intruder may try anything to have the chance to steal something that they’ve eyed from outside.

You can prevent garage break-ins by choosing the correct garage door locks. Check out these popular options that a locksmith can update your home with right away.

What do Avoid doing when locked out of your house

Do you know what to do when locked out of your house? Getting locked out of your home isn't fun. It's a frustrating situation and may lead you to do something you shouldn't do. There are certain things you should do when you get locked out and other things you should avoid doing. Here are five things you never want to do when you get locked out of your home.

Kick in the Door

It may be tempting to kick in your door, but it's a bad idea. First, this isn't like the movies or TV shows and you'll likely hurt yourself trying to kick in the door. There's a reason why police officer use a battering ram when they need to get in.

Second, if you do successfully kick in the door, it will probably need to be replaced. You'll likely cause damage to the door and the frame of the door. It's best to keep your anger under control and avoid trying to kick in the door. If you do, however, we also offer door installation in Chicago!

Break the Doorknob

If you want to cause yourself more headaches and more frustration, go ahead and break the doorknob. This means you'll need to replace it and it will likely cost you more than it should to get out of this jam. It's best to leave the doorknob alone so that you don't have to pay for a replacement.

In addition, if you break the doorknob, you'll probably damage the door and possibly the frame of the door. It could require an entirely new door, which will cost you far more than just calling a local locksmith in Chicago.

Pick the Lock

You're not an expert and just because others on TV can pick a lock with a paper clip doesn't mean you can. It's more likely that you'll damage the door lock and may even make it impossible to get a key into it. You may end up needing a replacement door lock due to your genius idea to pick the lock.

Break a Window

It's not necessary to break a window in order to get into your home. If you make this decision, you'll have to hire someone to replace your window. It will cost you more than you think and if it's an older window, you'll have one newer window to go with your home full of older windows.

Freak Out

There's no sense in freaking out if you've locked yourself out. Where there is a problem, there's also a solution. You don't need to freak out if you're locked out of the house. Instead, call The Professional Locksmith and let us help you get back into your home.

After you've gotten back into your home, consider having The Professional Locksmith help to keep this problem from happening again. How to prevent getting locked out again:

• Go keyless with smart locks requiring a code to get in instead of a key.

• Have a lock box hidden with a code to get in and put an extra house key in it.

• Get extra keys made and give them to close family members or friends.

Once you've been rescued, you can make one of these changes to ensure you don't have to worry about getting locked out again. Even if you do find yourself locked out again without a spare key, The Professional Locksmith is always just a phone call away!