When it comes to home security everyone knows that having good security measures applied to your front door is vital. With this said, it is shocking how many people overlook the potential security risks posed by your letterbox and how common and successful letterbox burglary actually is.

What Is Letterbox Burglary?

Letterbox burglary is a method in which burglars use to either gain entry to your home or steal small but high value items such as car keys to steal cars or wallets and purses. This is a very common method used by burglars and it requires little if any skill. Burglars will simply put their hand through the letterbox and reach up to let themselves into your property, if this is not possible, they will use a rod like tool to fish out high value items such as car keys and wallets. Unfortunately, both of these methods are highly affective and can result in the loss of high value items without your front door even being opened.

Letterbox Burglary Prevention

• Always store house and car keys out of sight, and never leave keys in the lock on the inside of the door. This is even more important if you have glass panels in your door that potential burglars can look through and see what they can take. It is also worth taking a look through your letterbox from the outside of your property so you can see exactly what is on view should a burglar decide to do the same.
• Replace current letterbox with one that has a built-in draught excluder. The nylon bristles built into a draught excluder letterbox also significantly reduce what a burglar can see when looking through, the letterbox making it much harder to fish out any high value items.
• You could have an anti-burglar letterbox installed. These letterboxes have been through stringent testing to ensure that they are vandal and snap proof ensuring they comply with the latest security standards.
• Letterbox restrictors can be installed, these work by restricting how much the flap on the letterbox can be opened so it can prevent hands or rods being pushed through.
• You could opt to completely remove your letterbox and have an external mailbox installed. However, this option can be quite expensive, so if you are looking to have a new front door then it might be an idea to choose one that doesn’t have a letterbox installed and instead install an external letterbox when the new door is fitted.

Burglars are always looking for new ways to gain entry to people’s homes and steal high value items, so it is vital that you keep up to date with your security measure and ensure that they are all up to date with the current security standard in order to best protect your home from unwanted intruders.

If you would like more advice on letterbox burglary or would like to implement and of the prevention methods mentioned above then contact Apex Mobile Locksmiths today  – 01253 713 658