Mobile Phone crime

Last week I went to a talk about mobile phone theft and misuse of electronic services, given by Shaun Whitehead from the Criminology and Criminal Justice centre at Loughborough University. There were lots of questions so he only managed to get through the mobile phone part of his research, but I thought some of his points were really interesting for Alertme customers.

You may know that there is a staggering amount of mobile phone theft in the UK - the most recent British Crime Survey (reported here by Halifax building society) reported that two MILLION mobile phones were stolen last year. Shaun and his colleague Jen Mailley have investigated ways of reducing this crime wave, by combining traditional criminology with modern technology.

One of the first things they did was to interview convicted phone thieves. Although most thefts are opportunistic, it turns out that thieves are keenly aware of risk and reward, just like everyone else. When they see an opportunity, they judge carefully whether it is worth the risk. Increase the risk to them, and the reward becomes less attractive. Another thing Shaun and Jen did was to look at ways of reducing those opportunities - if no opportunity presents itself, most thieves won't risk trying to create one.

Alertme helps protect your home in both ways. We give you some easy-to-spot (and rather smart) window stickers, so that potential thieves will have to factor in an increased risk to themselves. We can also warn you as you leave your house if you have left windows or doors open, helping you avoid giving thieves a chance.

Shaun's closing point put a great twist on the story. Phone insurance policies tend not to cover accidental damage or loss. That means that when someone has a problem with their phone, they've got to stump up for a new one, even though they've been paying to insure it. Although nobody can be sure, people who've studied the problem think that a lot of those 'stolen' phones actually went in the bin!

Crime maps and home security

This post will be more speculation than announcement. I've recently been alerted to a number of new initiatives that mashup crime with maps. This isn't a totally new idea, my hometown of Berkeley, CA has had an interactive crime map for a few years now, and in the USA at least, newspapers have been reporting police blotters forever, but it does seem to have a new life.

Blog posts like this one from O'Reilly also look at the concept.

Taking it a step further are businesses like the exciting Terabitz are combining this information with real estate listing and other local detail.

What I wonder is how much that will influence people's decisions on how and where they live. I'm guessing it depends, but I've always felt you take the good with the bad. Living in NYC or London may occasionally pose risks, but that hasn't stopped people wanting to live in such vibrant cities.

I would think the best approach is to use these tools to be informed, but follow your heart (or job or school or friends) and live where you like. Better to take a few steps to protect yourself where you want to be, than to be afraid.

So I'm hoping these tools deliver the information as just that - information. People shouldn't live in fear, they should have peace of mind about their homes. And I guess AlertMe might just be a useful tool in this respect.

For more information, see www.alertme.com

Mythbusting - Home Security Myth #2: Effectiveness

There was an interesting article about the effectiveness of home security a few weeks ago.

You can read the full version here.

The summary is that Britain has high rates of burglary because people don't take adequate steps to protect themselves (such as locking up and using their alarms) and that many steps they do take are ineffective (such as security lights and siren only alarms.)

They argue that some of these actually aid the burglar, like lights to work by, or are easily circumvented, like wearing a hoodie around a CCTV camera. And we all know that most alarm sounds are routinely ignored.

I would argue that the real reason all of these security measures fail is that they don't tell anyone who cares that there is a crime in progress. With our approach, a crafty burglar may still get in as none of us really wants to live in a concrete bunker, but if they do, you know instantly. You can then call the police and give them an opportunity to intervene WHILE it's still happening.

I'd much rather the police catch the bad guys in the act, than just take a crime report long afterward.

Effectiveness is based on deterrence and response. We can help with both.

A MySpace party and a wrecked home

It's long been conventional wisdom that a major benefit of programming computers is that this allows you to do a task many times over with ease. It's also been noted that if this task isn't well thought through, any bug is repeated many times over. The computer does what it is told, and the result may be much less or much more than desired. Networking on the internet can probably be said to escalate this effect by distributing the result far and wide.

In this case, we have a simple task: "Invite people to a party", that contained a small error of judgment "the party was unsanctioned by the parents and uncontrolled by the teenage host", and led to a disastrous result of "more party than desired".


Web revellers wreck family home

About 200 youngsters caused damage put at £20,000 to a family home after a party organised on a website.

Police said a teenage girl used the social networking site MySpace to advertise the party while her parents were away from home on Easter Monday.

The full article is available here.

So what does this have to do with AlertMe?

Well, our service monitors activity in the home. It could easily be set to report unusual volumes of activity, for instance the front door opening 200 times in an evening and ceaseless motion in the lounge, kitchen, or any other room. If the parents were alerted of this unexpected and abnormal circumstance, perhaps they could have responded in time to avoid the result, even calling the police to break up the party if necessary.

"Police take action as burglary rate increases"

I'm back from a two week holiday in the USA - not surprisingly I spent a fair amount of time there wishing I had a way to check in on our house in Cambridge....

I did return to find an interesting article in the Cambridge Evening News about local police efforts to stem burglaries. Seems to be a bit of good news/bad news - I'm very glad the police efforts are meeting some success, but it's a shame the burglary rate was almost triple last years' numbers.

Here's the first bit of the story:

SEVEN people were arrested and stolen property was recovered as police launched a bid to stem a sharp rise in burglaries.

The move, called Operation Onslaught, saw police swoop on the Arbury and King's Hedges areas of Cambridge in a crackdown on break-ins.

Between November 2 last year and February 23 this year there were a total of 128 burglaries in the two areas. In the same period the previous year 44 offences were reported.

It was also reassuring to hear that "All reports of burglary are taken extremely seriously and are fully investigated."

You can read the full article here.

Children wake quicker to their mothers' voices

Another interesting article, this time from CNN, about the power of parent's voices to wake their children in an emergency.

Study: Kids who slept through fire alarm tone awoke to mom's voice

POSTED: 1:32 p.m. EDT, October 2, 2006

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Children in deep sleep awoke to recordings of their mothers' voices -- calling them by name and ordering them out of their bedrooms -- even if they slept through the beeping sound a smoke alarm makes, according to a small study.

The study reaffirms previous research that shows what works for adults doesn't always work for children, said Dr. Gary Smith, one of the co-authors.

"Clearly, the strategy that has been tried and true and used for years ... fails miserably for children," said Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Columbus Children's Hospital.

The study of 24 children ages 6 to 12 found that 23 awoke to the recorded voice of their mother saying "(Child's first name)! (Child's first name)! Wake up! Get out of bed! Leave the room!" Fourteen of the children also awoke to the traditional tone alarm. One child didn't wake up to either.

The children who woke up to the voice did so at a median time of 20 seconds, compared with three minutes for those who woke up to the tone, according to the study by Columbus Children's Hospital researchers being released Monday in Pediatrics.
Funding for the study came from a grant from the Ohio Department of Public Safety's Division of Emergency Medical Services and the Ohio Emergency Medical Services Board.

A safety expert said the study was a start.

"We have a piece of the puzzle now and we're really happy someone has taken up this research and we hope it moves forward," said John Drengenberg, manager of consumer affairs for Underwriters Laboratories Inc., an independent organization that certifies safety for consumer products.

The U.S. Fire Administration estimates that 3,300 fatal fires killed 3,380 people (not including firefighters) in 2005, with 14 percent of victims younger than 10. Smoke alarms were not present in 42 percent of residential fatal fires; alarms did not operate in 21 percent.


Read the full CNN report here.