Are Self Defense Weapons a Safeguard or a Hazard?

When it comes to determining personal safety options, some people will sometimes consider self defense weapons.

Self defense weapons can include pepper spray, stun guns and firearms.  Selecting the right self defense weapon can be a challenging decision.

These weapons can really help to protect you during life-threatening situations.  They can also become safety liabilities if used improperly.

So are self defense weapons a safeguard or a hazard?  It depends.

The important thing is to come to a decision that is most comfortable for you can your family.  Following these tips will help you make the best decision.

• Explore Your Options – Determining what type of self defense weapon to purchase all depends on your preferences.  Take some time to review all of your options.  Think about the pros and cons that come along with each self defense weapon.

• Talk with Your Family – Consult family members before making a decision.  They can help you select the best option for you.  Family members with significant experience in firearms and other self defense weapons can be a valuable resource in making the right decision.

• Know Your Background – If you are already trained to use a certain self defense weapon, this is probably an easy decision for you.  However, if you don’t know how to use a certain weapon, be sure to take training classes.  These classes will teach you how to use, store and respect your weapon.  Training classes are a must for any novice.  Often, you can find classes at local police stations and community centers.

• Think about Storage – Once you get a self defense weapon, be sure to think about how you’re going to properly store and carry it.  Whether it’s pepper spray or a hand gun, make sure it is not accessible to children in your home.  There are plenty of options to safeguard a self defense weapon from children.

Following these tips will help you make the right personal safety decision for you as well as your family.

Making decisions about your home, business and personal security can be tough, but you don’t have to do it alone.

At Hue & Cry Security Systems, we’ve been helping families and businesses make the best security decisions for more than 25 years.

To learn how we can help you with your security needs, contact us today at 800-762-3196 or visit the Hue & Cry Security Systems Contact Page.

Holiday Driving Safety Tips That Will Keep Your Family Safe

Last month, we talked about how to prevent holiday fires. The blog posting had a lot of great tips on how to safely use lights, decorations and fire places during the holiday season.

With Christmas right around the corner, we thought we would discuss some important holiday travel safety tips. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the Christmas holiday season is one of the busiest travel times of the year.

With millions of people traveling this holiday season, we thought we would share some of the most important driving safety tips.

If you plan on driving to visit family or friends this holiday season, you should follow these driving safety tips.

1. Make Sure Your Car Is Running Smoothly: Before taking any long road trips. Take your car to a mechanic to make sure everything is working properly. Have the tires, windshield wipers, brakes and fluids inspected.

2. Map Out Your Route: Take the time to look at a map to pre-plan your route. GPS navigation units are great, but they are not always reliable. It’s good to have an old-fashion map at your side.

3. Don’t Leave Car Unattended: At rest stops and gas stations be sure to keep an eye on your car. Unattended cars with luggage are prime targets for theft. If you have to leave your car unattended make sure the doors are locked.

4. Know When To Stop: Be sure to take regular breaks during long road trips. It is very dangerous to drive when you’re tired. Also, be sure to stop driving if the roads become too dangerous.

5. Take Your Time: Don’t be in a rush to reach your destination. Take your time to help avoid accidents. Also drive the posted speed limit for your safety and the safety of other drivers.

Following these tips will help a lot with your holiday travels. To protect your home while you’re away make sure your home security system is working properly. For more information on home security monitoring and other home safety tips, read our blog post on “How To Protect Your Home While You’re Away.”

How To Make Charitable Contributions Without Getting Ripped Off

Finding the right charity to donate money to during the holidays can be a difficult process. You want to make sure the money you give is going to the right people.

Unfortunately, this is not always the case. To help you find a trustworthy charity this holiday season, we’ve compiled a list of what you should do before making a donation. Here are some of the most important tips.

1.   Get Information: Before making a charitable donation, get the organization’s name, address, phone number and materials about the charity. Also, be sure to check out the charity’s website. Never donate money to charities that don’t give you any information.

2.   Double Check Names: Sometimes questionable charities will have a name similar to a popular charitable organization. Be sure to check the organization’s website and request written information on the charity. The Better Business Bureau has a list of trustworthy charities.

3.  Avoid Giving Cash: If an unknown charity is asking for cash, it may be a scam. Avoid giving cash donations unless it’s a well-known charity such as the Salvation Army Christmas Charity. If a charity sends a “currier” to collect the money, this may also be the sign of a scam.

4.  Follow The Money: Before making a donation, be sure to ask where the money goes. You want to give to charities where a majority of the dollars go to programs. Good rates are between 60-75 percent.

5.  Don’t Be Intimidated: If the person representing the charity is pushy or intimidating, don’t donate. This could be the sign of a scam. Just because your talking with a charity, does not mean you have to donate.

6.  Don’t Get Caught Up In Stories: A lot of questionable charities will tell you gripping sob stories about the people you’re helping. Do not base your donation on the story. Base it on how they plan to use the donated money.

7.  Keep Records: For tax purposes it is important to keep records of all charitable donations. It’s also important to keep records to protect yourself against scams. After making a charitable donation, be sure to keep the organization’s name, address and phone number with your paperwork.

MOST IMPORTANTLY … Trust Your Gut: If something doesn’t feel right – don’t donate. There are plenty of great charitable organizations out there. Talk with family, friends and religious leaders to find the right charity for you this holiday season.

8 Tips to Protect Your Identity Online

In this day and age, almost everyone is using the internet to shop, pay bills and keep up with friends. The internet can be a powerful tool to help simplify your life. However, your life can turn into a complicated nightmare if you aren’t careful to protect your identity online. We’ve put together a few tips to help you stay safe while you’re surfing.

1. Don’t Volunteer Information – When you’re filling out a form online, only give out the information that is required. The less information that you put online, the less that someone can steal from you. And if the form you are filling out isn’t important, sometimes it’s okay to give a less than truthful answer to the form questions.
2. Look For the Lock – Whenever you are giving out personal information on the web, make sure that the page you are on is secure. Look for the lock symbol in your browser’s status bar or “https” in the web address. This ensures that the form you are filling out is sending your online data in a secure manner. Remember, all web addresses generally start out with “http” but a secure page will start out as “https”.
3. Don’t Feed the Phish – If you receive an email from your bank or financial institution, do not click on the links in the email. Go directly to their website to login. Even if the address that the email came from looks legitimate, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Most occurrences of identity theft happen because the victim gave out their own information by accident.
4. Shop Safely – Check with your credit card company or financial institution to see what types of online shopping products they may have available. Some credit card companies offer “one-shot” credit card numbers. These are numbers that your company may issue you to do online shopping – they’re used once only. You can shop safely without the worry that someone may steal your card number.
5. Educate Your Kids – You can take every precaution for safe online activity but if you don’t teach your kids about online safety, they can inadvertently give out important information. Make sure that they understand not to send identifying information about their family or themselves online. Even if they are sending the information to a trusted person, their transmissions could be intercepted.
6. Look Over Your Shoulder – When using your computer in a public area, make sure that you are aware of your surroundings. People can look over your shoulder and watch you enter passwords or PIN numbers that would allow them access to your private information.
7. What’s Their Policy? – Make sure that, when you are shopping online, paying a bill, or participating in any activity where you will be engaging in a funds transfer, that the website you are on has a privacy policy. Make sure that you review it before giving out your financial information.
8. Use a Smart Password – We mentioned earlier that a lot of online identity theft occurs because people accidentally give out their information. This can be true of passwords too. Most “hacking” is actually just lucky guessing so, when you are picking passwords for your online accounts, be smart about it. Don’t use a password that is easily guessed (like a pet or child’s name.) Use as many characters as you can and, if allowed, add in numbers or special characters to make your password hard to guess.

Keeping your identity safe online can seem very daunting. However, by following a few easy guidelines and adding in a good dose of common sense, the internet can be a fun and enjoyable place for your entire family.

Keep Your Children Safe Around the Pool

Now that summer is here, your family may be doing a lot more swimming. Swimming can be a fun activity for everyone but pools can be dangerous places for children unless you are prepared. Here are some tips to help you keep your child safe around the pool:

• Never leave your children alone in or near the pool.
• Instruct child care providers about the safety hazards for children around pools and emphasize that children must be supervised in or around the pool at all times.
• Make sure that you can reach out and touch any child under five at all times while swimming.
• Install a fence around your pool. Your fence should be at least four feet tall on all four sides. You should also install self-closing and self-latching gates. Make sure that all latches are out of your child’s reach. Most drownings with children occur because they wander out to a pool and fall in.
• Keep rescue equipment near the pool such as a shepherd’s hook or a life preserver. You should also have a phone close by.
• Remove steps to above-ground pools when not in use. However, this is not a substitute for a fence.
• Learn CPR
• Place outdoor furniture away from the pool area so that children may not use them to climb inside of the fence and fall into the pool.
• Use an approved life vest, not air-filled swimming aids.
• Make sure that you have a clear view of the pool from your house.
• Use a float-line across the pool to mark where the deep end begins.
• Teach your children about good pool safety habits and make sure they understand that running, pushing others, diving or jumping into shallow waters, and “dunking” are all dangerous activities.
• Be sure to remove all toys out of the pool once you are finished swimming so that children are not tempted to go in after them.
• Remember, even if your child knows how to swim, that does not mean that he or she is safe around water.

Following these tips and using a good dose of common sense will help keep your children safe this summer in and around the pool.

Using Camera Surveillance Systems to Stop Time Clock Fraud

Time clocks are an excellent way to keep track of employee hours and pay them appropriately. Unfortunately, some less than moral employees have found ways to game the system and work far fewer hours than they are paid for.

Not a week goes by that we don’t hear about some clever ploy to get paid for hours that were not actually worked.

In one recent case, two employees would work on alternating days and take turns signing each other in. The company, thinking they were getting two full employees each day, turned out to only be getting half of what they were paying for. It took a full 2 months (and a lot of wasted money) before a manager discovered the scheme and fired the pair!

If your company is using a time clock or other employee sign-in method, it’s important that you take an active role in eliminating this type of behavior. By maintaining a good visible security camera surveillance system, you can catch and punish bad behavior immediately and significantly cut down on employee theft.

Hopefully your employees are totally honest with their hours but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

How Employees Justify Stealing

As business owners, we like to think about our employees as upstanding, well intentioned people who would never even dream of stealing from us or doing anything that harms the business. For the most part, that’s exactly what happens.

Unfortunately, there are enough bad apples that an estimated billion (that’s billion with a b) dollars is stolen by employees each WEEK!

How can that be possible?

As it turns out, some people are great at finding excuses and justifications for their bad behavior.

Some of the most popular ones we hear are:

• “I deserve a higher paycheck anyways”
• “Everyone else is doing it so why shouldn’t I?”
• “It’s not like anyone is going to miss a few small items”
• “This is payback for all of the bad things the company has done to me”
• “The opportunity is too great to pass up”
• “They don’t have any way to catch me so why not?”
• “Their insurance covers the loss anyways so it’s no big deal”
• “They just pass the price on to the customers so the company isn’t harmed”

Using excuses like these, employees in businesses of every size and industry are stealing from their employers every day. Until you implement measures to stop the theft like security camera surveillance systems, there is little that can be done to prevent it.