Your House Is Advertising Your Absence
Residential burglary peaks in summer. The FBI data is consistent year over year: July and August are the highest-volume months. The reason isn't heat — it's visibility. Overfull mailboxes, uncut grass, cars missing from driveways for days at a time, and Instagram posts from the beach all signal the same thing: nobody's home.
Here's a pre-departure checklist that addresses the actual risk factors, not the theoretical ones.
Before You Leave
- Hold your mail: USPS.com → Hold Mail is free and takes 90 seconds. A packed mailbox is visible from the street and signals absence immediately.
- Pause newspaper/delivery subscriptions or ask a neighbor to collect them daily.
- Arrange lawn care: An unmowed lawn after 7+ days is a reliable absence indicator in summer.
- Light timers: Smart plugs (Kasa, Wemo) set to turn on lamps at dusk and off at 11pm cost $10–$15 each. Dark house every night for a week is another signal.
- Ask a trusted neighbor to park in your driveway occasionally and do a casual walk-by.
- Secure sliding doors: A cut dowel rod or sliding door security bar in the track prevents a slider from opening even with a compromised lock.
Social Media: The Part Most Families Miss
Do not post vacation photos while you are still on vacation. Wait until you return. This is not paranoia — in documented burglary cases, perpetrators admitted they found targets through social media.
Even private accounts have risks: you cannot fully control who sees posts shared by friends, and your audience is larger than you think it is.
If you want to share photos in real time, use a direct message group with people you'd trust with a house key.
Your Digital Life While Traveling
- Hotel Wi-Fi: Never access banking or sensitive accounts on hotel networks without a VPN. Hotel Wi-Fi is frequently unencrypted and may be monitored.
- Travel notifications: Notify your bank and credit card companies of travel dates. A transaction from a different state flagged as fraud and blocked is a real problem if you're trying to pay for dinner.
- Enable Find My: On every device before you leave. A lost phone in an unfamiliar city is recoverable with Find My; without it, it's just gone.
- Emergency contacts: Leave a copy of your itinerary, hotel names, and emergency contact numbers with one person at home.
When You Return
Walk the exterior before you walk in. Look for signs of tampering: broken locks, window screens out of place, tools left behind. If you see anything that suggests entry, don't go in — call police from outside and let them clear the property first.