The holiday season is a wonderful time for friends and family. Families celebrate together, have friends come over and generally have a great time. There’s Boxing Day and then the New Year just round the corner. Oh, what a wonderful time! Ah, but don’t forget, it is a wonderful time for thieves as well. In fact, they probably look forward to this period more than you do!

This is the time when you spend on gifts, perhaps for yourself. This is a time when you go shopping and come back with loads of goodies you can hardly fit through your front door. This may also be a time people go off on vacation. All this makes for a delicious recipe for thieves. You need to stay vigilant and careful.

Here are some simple security tips for the holiday season.

1. Hide Presents

If you have bought a lot of presents, whether for your family or for friends, make sure that these are hidden from prying eyes. If you lay them on top of a table and they are all wrapped in glittering paper with brightly coloured ribbons, these may be seen from the outside. If you happen to have a large clear window, someone passing by can easily see these gifts from the curb.

You need to put these away so they cannot be seen from the outside or at least cover them. A thief who sees this doesn’t need a second invitation. They are good at what they do, unfortunately. If you think for one moment that you and your family are going to be home all the time and so it will be safe, think again. They can strike when you go to bed.

2. Careful When Throwing Out Boxes

When you’ve bought yourself and your family some nice electronic gadgets, be careful when disposing the boxes. These boxes will act like a neon sign saying, “come and rob me.” Imagine placing a huge box that says “60” LG Smart 3D Plasma TV” outside your home. Thieves will start salivating at the prospect of ‘owning’ one of these.

Thieves also go through trash. If you bought a gift for yourself, they will gladly take it off your hands. You need to be incredibly careful when discarding boxes that contained expensive items at any time, but more so during the Christmas period.

3. Going Away?

If you decide to go away for 10 days or so, you have to take care of a few things to enhance security. For one thing, it might be worth contacting a professional locksmith to change locks. You should have some garden lights on and also consider installing lights that can come on and off periodically so it looks like someone is in.

If you have newspapers delivered, make sure to have it stopped during this period. Speak to neighbours to let them know, so that they can keep an eye out for anything untoward.

4. Shopping

If possible, don’t do all of your shopping on one day. If you bought some presents and rather than walking with it, you decide to put it in your car before heading back inside to get more, someone may have seen this and they might target your car. Try to break up your shopping and give yourself enough time. Doing it all in one day, especially if it’s large items can cause you to be targeted.

Look at some of these ideas and perhaps come up with your own to try and reduce the possibility of being the next target of a criminal. The Christmas period is a good time for these criminals, so try to stay secure and reduce opportunities for these thugs.