Crooks use cellular, Wi-Fi jammers to enter homes Get your house offline
Feb. 16 started like any typical Friday night. My husband and I decided to stay home, grill chicken and make a salad for dinner. About 6:45 p.m., we heard some loud rumbling overhead.
We walked out back and two police helicopters were overhead – shining lights all over our property, and a recording echoed, “Police. You are under arrest. Stay right there and I won’t shoot you.” Members of the Phoenix SWAT Team with a few dogs were circling our property. One guy said, “Yeah, there’s a jammer right here.” He picked it up. I asked, “What’s going on?”
A SWAT member said, “Ma’am, a South American gang is targeting homes to steal from. The jammer says you might have been next.”
It turns out that when the gang saw we were home, they likely diverted their attention to a house nearby. That homeowner left at 5 p.m. to have dinner and got a notification his security cameras were offline at 5:05 pm. He thought the internet went down. The gang broke in and took $25,000 in cash and valuables worth $100,000. They were in and out in less than 10 minutes.
The gang places cellular and Wi-Fi jammers around the homes they’re targeting. This way, security cameras and phones are useless. A Phoenix police officer told me the gang probably noticed nothing was down in our house.
Our home’s security cameras and internet are hard-wired. Even when the thieves tried to jam the Wi-Fi signals, the security camera’s red lights showed they were recording everything. We also still have a landline.
The gang scopes out homes beforehand. They drive the neighborhood and look up homes on real estate sites to get an idea of where the primary bedroom is located. They look for dogs, too.
This is happening all over the country. Kudos to Phoenix police – they arrested three members of the gang who were in my neighborhood that night.
Invest in tech
We built our home, so it was easy to install the wiring for the internet and almost everything connected to it for the fastest connection that also won’t be susceptible to a jammer. Of course, you can hardwire after construction, but that’s costly and often unrealistic. Here are some options:
• Use a wired camera for backup.
• A cam with SD card storage will still record if there’s no Wi-Fi.
• Put up motion-activated lights. It makes it harder for anyone to sneak around.
• A femtocell (think of it as a mini cell tower) could be enough to keep your connection if thieves drop jammers outside – T-Mobile or Verizon.
• Have an Amazon Echo? Away mode lets you control lights so it looks like the house is occupied.
• An innovative television simulator makes it look like someone’s watching TV at your house when you’re not there.
• Post security signs.
Check Zillow.com, Realtor.com and Redfin for photos of your house. The more crooks know about the layout, the better for them. Remove those pics.
You’re not done yet. It’s a good idea to blur your house from Google Maps and Apple Maps while you’re at it.
Learn about all the latest technology on the Kim Komando Show. For Kim’s daily tips, free newsletters and more, visit her website at Komando.com.