I always do my best to try and keep you a step ahead of the crooks. I haven’t mentioned this before because quite frankly it was rare. But with the price of gas these days it is beginning to happen a lot all over the place.

I am talking about gas thieves, not from the pumps but from YOUR car/truck’s gas tank! Now for those saying but don’t most if not all vehicles have a locking gas cap or lock to even get to the cap? The answer is yes your car/truck probably does have some type of locking mechanism preventing your gas from being siphoned.

But you see that doesn’t help here. What they do now to get to that high dollar gas you have just waiting for them to steal is drill a hole in your tank and drain it that way. No more mouthfuls of gas trying to siphon. Nope, now they just drill a hole and empty your tank.

The loss of gas here is only a small part of this problem. As you probably already thought to yourself, the tank now needs to be fixed. This requires for the tank to be dropped and either replaced or fixed if it is even possible (I am no mechanic). This can cost you hundreds to thousands of dollars depending on what type of vehicle you drive.

They are mostly targeting bigger cars/trucks. They want the bigger gas tanks because this isn’t even a little bit efficient way to steal gas and a lot gets dumped out on your driveway. Bad for your pocket and for the environment.

So what can you do? There are some things you can do to try and prevent this.

1. Light is a crooks enemy. Get a motion activated light and put it right over the driveway. This serves 2 purposes. It helps scare off people who may want to do something to your vehicle. The 2nd thing this does is help protect you and everyone else that comes over to your house during nighttime hours. A dark driveway is not a good thing to come home to.

2. Another thing you can do is get a motion activated camera. You have a few options here. You can go with something like the Cybereye which sits in your vehicle and is discreet or you can go with something more visible and try and stop the crime from even happening. This can be done by placing either a Dome surveillance camera or dummy outdoor camera right in plain sight so everyone can see it.

3. You can also try an inexpensive alarm that alerts you when someone is in a area you are monitoring. We have the Voice Alert which works as a wireless driveway alarm system. You could place a sensor in your driveway and set it up to say (yes say) “someone in the driveway” or whatever you want it to say. This way you know when it happens and can do something about it.

4. If your neighborhood has a watch group, join it. If it doesn’t then now might be a good time to form one. The police can only do so much and be in so many places at once, it is up to us to help out. Be smart and careful though.

Until our Government gets off its arse and forces a change from fossil fuel burning engines we will be at the mercy of a part of the world that hates us and is enjoying watching us squirm as they reap record breaking profits at our expense. Crimes like this shouldn’t even exist but unless we force a change things will only get worse! Write those politicians and tell em to get to work!

The Judge
Total Security
Stun Guns, Pepper Sprays
Nanny Cams

There is a disturbing increase in the amount of home invasions reported in recent years. Home invasion takes on a few forms but in this case I am referring to daylight home invasion robberies and burglaries.

What’s the difference between robbery and burglary?
Easy robbery is when they take something from your person, burglary they take it from your home.

In reality either way they are taking your stuff but robbery is much more risky since it is you and the crook face to face. Anyway, as I was saying.

Looking at the crime statistics across the country you will find many of these home invasions are happening during the day when people go to work. They basically wait until you are gone then walk up and kick your front door in. Within less than 10 minutes (on average) they have what they want and are gone.

Unfortunately not all of the crooks do their homework and what they think is a home with the homeowner gone, isn’t. Imagine your a young mother home with the new baby and some lowlife kicks your door in. Scary thought. But it happens.

There are some things you can do to help try and prevent this type of crime on your home. When home it is much easier to stop this crime, besides a good reinforced front and back doors you can use a few inexpensive security products. A door brace is simply a bar that props against the door. With a door brace your front door would be more likely to break then a door brace would be to give. They are very inexpensive, around ($15.95), yet are a very effective way to make your door extremely hard to kick in. You can see it here Door Brace

There is also safety bars that you can get installed but they are a permanent thing so be sure it is what you want. They get bolted to the doors and the frame and then you slide a metal bar across to help secure the door. Prices on these vary due to installation and different manufacturers. You can find them at local security stores and/or at various front door retailers.

Another option which may help to make your house undesirable to the crooks are dummy cameras. No need for an expensive surveillance system just setup the dummy cameras in plain sight as if they were real and the crooks without close examination will never know.

Now installing a monitored or non monitored surveillance system is also another option. The difference being price and choice of equipment and of course that monthly monitoring fee. But a surveillance system can help to lower insurance costs and deter criminals so if you have the funds it might be the way to go for you.

Most of these things don’t matter here due to the fact that these scumbags just walk up and kick in the front door in broad daylight. No finesse, no skills, any lowlife can do this which is bad. Here only reinforcing the door with either a safety bar or door brace can you stop these type of home invasions.

Keep your eyes open!

The Judge
Total Security
Stun Guns, Pepper Sprays
Nanny Cams

This may make the hair on the back of ya neck stand up if you don’t know about this growing problem!

I am not a big phone person. I prefer email or face to face conversations. It is something about holding that thing to my head that annoys me and I know there are blue-tooth devices so you can just have a thing in your ear but it doesn’t make it less annoying in my eyes.

I remember the good ol’ days when no one had a cellphone and those that did had that giant bag phone, anyone remember those? Even after the death of the bag phone, cellphones were still huge and did nothing but let you make and receive phone calls…ahhh the good ol’ days.

Well now, cellphones are nothing but mini computers that can take pictures, connect to the internet, play mp3’s, text message and so on. The problem with all this new technology stuffed into an internet connected device (whether you access the net through your phone or not it is still connected) is that there is NO security and NO virus protection at all!

This is where the intelligence agencies step in. I can safely mention all this now that it is public knowledge. For the last few years (shortly after the internet access was added) the FBI and other agencies found ways to turn cell phones into what they called “roaming bugs”.

They have been using conversations recorded without knowledge from mobsters cell phones against them. For those saying well done, I agree in theory. You see it wasn’t they got a phone tap to get the recordings, instead that injected a virus and effectively hacked the cell phones to allow them to control it remotely!

Now when I say control I mean control. They could turn the phone on if turned off. See everything the camera on the phone sees. Hear everything said within 10 feet of the phone through the microphone we speak into to talk to someone. And much more!

Now if that invasion doesn’t make you shiver that fact that the ability to hack cell phones has made its way into the public. Right now, someone could be remotely hacking your cellphone and you will have no idea they are doing it until they use it against you.

Cases are starting to surface where people are being stalked by people who have hacked their cellphone. I tell you this so you can be aware and at the end I’ll offer some suggestions that MIGHT help but more needs to be done. Back to the stalking, imagine your sitting on a couch talking with your family.

A few minutes later you get a text message with what is a transcript of everything just said. Followed by them making comments about clothes you or family members are wearing. And of course the childish threats of violence. What would you first thought be?

Most people are going to thinking someone is looking in their windows or maybe has installed some hidden camera in your house or that they are even IN your house. When in fact they simply may have hacked your cellphone and took control of the camera which is how they can see you and the microphone which is how they hear you.

The worst part is that the virus goes into your address book and text messages everyone in your list the virus, infecting their phones as well. This is where things get even scarier, you decide to change phones and numbers to try and ditch the stalker on to have it happen on your new phone after one of the people in your old list who is now infected sends the virus back to your new phone!

Ask yourself this, would you connect to the internet and surf or open emails without virus protection on your computer? And if your answer is yes, have you ever had a virus occur as a result? The answer will most likely be yes since there are literally 10’s of thousands of viruses out there running wild.

Now for those of you that think I am talking out an orifice I normally don’t speak from I have included many links to show you this is real.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV_I7cgkqXc – This is a morning tv show you’ll see a guy from a security website on it say that he doesn’t believe this is really happening but in later interviews he changes his story to say it may happen but is rare or exotic as he calls it but he is talking out that orifice I mentioned above.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wbi3VgLwvE – This is the today show – A guy from Symantec the leading anti virus/firewall provider who says it very well can happen and that they have been saying it would for over a year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTtr6ooNuHM – This is from geraldo last year he covers more than just this issue like caller id spoofing and ssn stealing but I will cover those in detail at a later date. Just concentrate on the first part where the guy steals the address book from Geraldos phone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G1fNjK9SXg – This is a Fox news report about fbi hacking cell phones and using them against the Mob like I mentioned earlier.

http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/23/technology/snoopware_mobil/ – This is the CNN website article about snoopware which is what they are calling this cell phone hacking virus it is also known as cellfinity.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9027438&pageNumber=2 – This is another nationally recognized website’s article with some good tips a the end for trying to protect yourself from this.

http://www.lavasoft.com/company/newsletter/2007/1_31/article1.html – This is an anti adware and firewall provider discussing the issue.

And the smoking gun to prove this is……http://www.flexispy.com/ – one of the MANY sites selling the actual snoopware that doesn’t exist and can’t be happening. Still don’t believe? Well then don’t.

As for protecting yourself, don’t count on the government since they didn’t even want to admit this was possible since they were using it against the mob for a while now and didn’t want to loose this roaming bug. There are more companies coming up with mobile security software like http://www.mymobisafe.com and http://www.symantec.com.