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Comment by bena | Hacker News Reader

Yes, my wife was really insistent on our front door being locked while we were inside our apartment. I pointed out to her that our front door was nearly top to bottom glass panes and if someone with ill-intent wanted to gain entry, all they had to do was bust a pane and unlock the door themselves.

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True, but if someone wants to get into a house and your neighbor's door is locked and yours isn't, which is the more likely to be entered?

Neither. If you're looking to break into houses, you're not going door to door testing locks.

The exact thing is happening in my neighbourhood on a regular basis in the last year. And in some cases the burglar managed to get away with notebooks and other valuables while the owner were just upstairs for 5 minutes.

How did they know the owners were upstairs?

I'm sorry, but your anecdote smells. If you are robbing houses at random, the last thing you want to do is rob an occupied home. You rob an occupied home for a reason specific to that house or the owner of that house.

Most burglaries happen in the daytime when people are at work and their houses would be locked regardless.

And the most common form of home theft nowadays is package theft. Which isn't going to be thwarted by locking your home since, you know, the package is just sitting on the porch.

That's exactly what you are doing. In a large majority of the cases. You can lookup security videos all day long on youtube, thieves will commonly go door to door just looking for an unlocked door or more often, car to car looking for an unlocked door so they can steal the contents.

Was she reassured?

Does the exposure of security theater ever reassure anyone?

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