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Hi Resident With Christmas coming up soon, keep your vehicle safe from thieves looking for opportunities. Around this time of year, people tend to leave valuable items like presents, shopping and cash lying around for convenience in their cars and this is exactly what the opportunists are on the lookout for! A lot of people tend to fall victim of car thefts at this time of year so here are a few tips on how to keep safe: Make sure that you do not leave any personal and valuable items in your car at all! If you do tend to do this out of habit, make sure they are well hidden away and not easily accessible. The best thing is to break that habit altogether because it only takes one person to spot a phone in the holder or cash on the seat and they've got a hold of a lot of your personal information!After leaving your car, always make sure that you have locked the doors. These opportunists will wait for people to walk away thinking that their doors have been locked. Just to be sure, after locking your vehicle, listen out for the locking sound or even pull the handles.Never leave your car running! People tend to do this while ‘popping out for a second' and to leave your engine running with the keys in the car is like actually handing it all over to a thief yourself.This sounds like common knowledge but to remove your shopping bags from the car as soon as you get home. Especially when large items are poking out of bags like wrapping paper and bigger gifts. These are easier to spot as thieves will not even need to look through your windows, it'll just be visible for them. Never think that you can chance it and be able to leave them in your car overnight.Be cautious of where you are loading shopping into and out of your car. Thieves will watch people loading expensive items into and out of their cars so they know exactly who to target. Make sure where you park your car is covered by CCTV. If an incident was to occur, at least it would give us chance of an identification. Park your vehicle in an area that has street lighting. That way if someone is in the area, neighbours or passers by are able to see faces, clothes and what they are up to.Use extra protection where you can. This includes steering wheel locks, tracking devices in your car, dash cams and Faraday pouches for cars that have keyless entry. Many newer cars will have tracking devices within them and will be able to track your cars location in the app. Keyless cars unlock automatically when the key fob becomes available within a short range of the car. With a Faraday pouch, the signal to the keys are cut off completely when well sealed. Faraday pouches are made up of a metallic fabric which acts as a shield to stop car thieves using relay attacks to unlock or start your car. Cheap or damaged pouches may not work as effectively as those that are of a higher quality. The pouches can also block signals to mobile phones, bank cards and other devices that have wireless signals. For any further information or advice, feel free to send me a reply and i'll try my best to help out! Thank you :) |