By By SuperPages
If you’ll soon be heading out on vacation, an extended weekend trip, or even just to work in the morning, it’s probably always in the back of your mind: the ever-present threat that someone will break into your home while you’re gone.
It’s a very real risk, no matter where you live. And as crime statistics show, it’s a risk that’s not diminishing much as time passes.
So the best thing that you can do to protect your home, your family, and your property is to make your home a difficult target for burglars. And one of the single most effective ways to do that is to make your garage door more secure. Because as most burglars know, the garage door is the most vulnerable point-of-attack for most homes. These garage door safety tips are a start in keeping your home, your family, and your property safe and secure.
Here are six tips for strengthening that point of vulnerability in your home:
#1. Disable Opener
One way in which burglars can gain access through the door is by hacking into your automated door opening system. A great way to foil that break-in method is to simply unplug your opener.
This is a very simple method of defense that most of us never even think about!
#2. Change Codes
Most garage door opener controls come from the factory with standard access codes. Unfortunately, that may mean that a burglar with access to the same brand and model of remote may be able to access your system.
You can help prevent that possibility simply by changing the access codes on your remote.
#3. Update to Rolling Code Technology
A more effective approach to preventing a burglar from accessing your system via a hack is to update to a more modern opener that utilizes rolling code technology.
Rolling code technology changes the access codes for your opener every time you use the remote. So even if a technologically savvy burglar manages to capture your opener’s codes when you arrive home and open the door with your remote, it will do him no good. Because the next time your opener is activated, it will demand a different set of codes.
#4. Install a Wireless Keypad
Wireless keypads require the entry of a personal identification number to operate the door. It’s a more secure method of controlling the door than with a remote control. Assuming, of course, that the PIN is kept secure.
#5. Be Careful with Remote
You wouldn’t leave the key to your house lying around in your car, would you? That would just be begging for trouble.
But in essence, your garage door opener remote is a house key. And leaving it in your car where strangers (like parking attendants) might gain access to it can compromise your home’s security.
#6. Keep House Door Locked
Suppose a burglar does manage to get past your garage door? Don’t make that the last obstacle he faces by leaving your garage-to-house door unlocked.
Many people don’t bother to lock that door, assuming that they are secure behind their garage door. But the door that leads from the garage into the home can provide an additional layer of defense. Why not take advantage of it?