

Have you ever considered getting one of those cute family decals for your car? You know the ones, where you can choose little stick figures to represent your family, to show how proud you are of them all. You can even choose figures with different clothes or doing different things – like a stick-figure dad in his military uniform, mum with a shovel and plant pot, a little boy in a football uniform with a ball, and a little girl in a ballerina tutu. To many they’re just a sweet decoration for your car. But for others, they’re considered dangerous. And on that point, we very much agree. If you hadn’t considered the darker side of these nice little stickers
What’s The Harm?
That’s the big question. After all, they’re just stickers, right? Well, yes, but here are just a few things I can work out about you, just by looking at that sticker:
- How many people are in your family
- What each one does or likes
- Roughly how many rooms are in your house
- Where the valuables are likely to be in your home
- What type of valuables they can expect to find
- What time of day you’re likely to be out
- If there are any activities your children do that mean you’ll be out
That’s a lot of information to give away! You might not even realise you’re doing it. But let’s take the example above.
If the dad is in a military uniform, that means he’s in the army, and likely to be away for long stints of time. Mum holding gardening equipment means there will be lots of tools – which are one of the biggest targets for theft since they’re easy to sell and almost impossible to trace. If you have older kids, you’re more likely to have a lot of tech and devices in the house that are scattered about, while younger children might indicate there will be less, and it will likely be concentrated in the more adult areas.
Got kids? Then you’ll be on the school run at the same times every day, which means your house will be empty. And we already know that the most popular time for burglaries is 2.30pm-4pm for exactly that reason. If your stickers show them doing a sport or hobby, they also know you’ll be out ferrying them to and from those activities. Now, all a criminal has to do is follow that car home to find out where you live, and they have almost everything they need to target you for burglary. Or, they might have even seen the car in your driveway, so that’s 2 jobs done at once!
Is It Likely?
Are criminals really going to stake out your car to find out about you, just so they can rob you? It probably isn’t their first port of call, but there definitely are criminals that use them as an extra chance for research. Most burglaries are crimes of opportunity, but that doesn’t mean the opportunity isn’t spotting a car sticker and following along. It also doesn’t mean they won’t try their chances once they know where the owner of that car lives.
The other thing to remember is that the more information you’re displaying on your car, the more information you’re giving away. Bumper stickers aren’t as popular in the UK as they are in the US, but there are still opportunities. For example, the round ‘UK’ or ‘GB’ stickers can signal that you leave the country with your car. Disabled stickers can be a sign that you have valuable medical equipment in your home. Stickers that say things like ‘I’d rather be fishing’ indicate you have fishing gear, and will likely be out of the house on nice weekends. Even the traditional ‘baby on board’ sticker can be a sign to untrustworthy people that you will be easily distracted. It goes on and on.
A lot of people will disagree with this blog. They’ll think we’re being scaremongers, or paranoid – that these things don’t really happen. But we are afraid to say that they do, and probably more often than you would. It’s our job to think like criminals. That includes all the different ways they choose and scope out the places they break into, as well as how they break into them. So while many criminals won’t bother to go to these lengths, it’s important to know that some will, and if they do, you’re giving them all the information they need.
So when you’re choosing a sticker to put on your car, just remember that there are 2 sides to the information you’re presenting, and it’s all for public consumption. If you’d like information and advice on how to better protect your home or business from burglars, just get in touch with the Securifix team today.