By Blake Haas
BLOOMINGTON – With the school bell set to ring in a month, those taking summer vacations may want to think twice about posting on social media.
According to State Farm theft claims data, Illinois ranks third among the 50 states with over 5,800 building and personal property theft claims handled for the year.
“We have to look at it from an economic perspective and the state of Illinois is obviously losing population at a pretty quick pace compared to the rest of the United States,” said El Paso State Farm Agent Katie Bashary. “Whenever there is an economic depletion unfortunately there is burglars, theft, crimes, misdemeanors of that nature do increase.
Social media is one of the reasons for the theft. Bashary added that for those taking summer vacations to try to refrain from posting on social media until the conclusion of the trip.
“I think the most important thing is to rely alot upon how your house is maintained [and] making sure that your house always appears occupied,” added Bashary. “One of the most important things that we see is that when people are utilizing social media they want to share exciting picture’s of vacations. However refraining from posting when you are actually gone is really key, because people are monitoring social media and actually do case neighborhoods. People are monitoring that and driving through and seeing if people are gone or what their routine are and if those things change then they feel like it is a ripe opportunity to break into someone’s home.”
Another cause leading to the large amount of theft claims is home delivery. With boxes sitting on the front porch, Bashary added that could lead into a prime opportunity for burglars.
“You want to be able to have a good relationship with drivers, especially for those that are using online retail [outlits],” added Bashary. “You want to make sure you have a good relationship with the UPS driver or a FedEx driver and that they know of your coming and goings and if there is a safe place to put that type of equipment, boxes, etc.”
California topped the list with just over 12,000 claims, while Texas was second, Georgia was fourth and Ohio rounded out the top five of theft claims.
Blake Haas can be reached at [email protected].
