<p>Last year, I had an incident where my dorm room was broken into (and some expensive clothing stolen). The room had a combination-type lock with only five digits and very large numbers; needless to say, some lowlife "friend" of my roommate got his hands on the combination when he was visiting. I caught him going in and out a few times, but even when I reported him, not much could be done.</p>
<p>It didn't help that my room faced the lobby of the building, so it was quite easy to see the combination being typed.</p>
<p>Any security tips on how to prevent this type of incident?</p>
<p>Is there any way you could change the passcode on the lock? Or get several locks and rotate? That way, the number they see you punching in one day may not be the same one as the next.</p>
<p>Yeah OP that is a definite need to know piece of information. If you can’t switch locks without calling a locksmith then this thread is a moot point.</p>
<p>I know at my college, if you lose your key or the lock is broken, housing replaces the current lock with a new one. But I imagine you’d have to pay a lot.</p>
<p>No, it’s not a padlock, and it’s not removable or user-serviceable in any way. It’s just a door knob with a keypad. The combo is assigned and only five digits (imagine having a five-number password to your bank account), and you can’t re-program it! Terribly stupid design, in my opinion…especially considering the room was EXACTLY where everyone entered the building, and anyone could look in!</p>
<p>The thief was NOT my friend! It was just one of my roommate’s acquaintances.</p>
<p>I wish I could have installed some type of alarm to protect against idiots like this thief.</p>
<p>Still, any advice? Do they make portable alarm systems? Or, should I just buy a safe?</p>
<p>The best way to prevent incidents is to keep a low profile. You see, when you take even the basic precaution of having a visible padlock, that’s indicating that there’s something valuable enough to warrant breaking the padlock. If you keep on upgrading, you’re just going to attract more and more attention. It’s not going to be economically feasible; you’ll end up spending more on security products than you do on simply taking the risk and replacing what was stolen.</p>
<p>If I were you, I’d do the following:</p>
<p>1.) Request the dorms to change the lock into something that requires a key. Generally speaking, keys are much harder and more expensive to duplicate than knowledge. It’d be best if you can require both the key and keycode, but that’s a stretch.</p>
<p>2.) Hide your clothes and keep a low profile. For several reasons, I actually keep my clothes in black garbage bags that are then stored in weird corners of my room. As for electronics, I pretend they’re not valuable and make them blend into the environment along with less expensive things.</p>
<p>Yes, this is security by obscurity, but it’s much easier to remove someone’s desire to break in than to actually prevent them from doing so.</p>
<p>Talk to campus security. There has to be some way for them to change the code–otherwise it would be a horribly flawed system, like not changing the lock on your house after someone breaks in and steals a key.</p>
<p>It’s definitely possible. Our ID cards are our keys. We swipe our ID in the door lock, put in a Pin and enter. Then you have to swipe again to get into the bedroom. Suitemates cannot get into each other’s bedrooms, only roommates.</p>
<p>If it’s super valuable, consider leaving it at home.</p>
<p>I bought a micro camera system with dvr and hid two cameras barely hanging out of the drop down tiles in our ceiling. We had pull out drawers in a built in dresser, so i pulled them out and bolted the dvr to the top of the dresser. Both my roomate and myself made a pact that the only time the dvr would ever be viewed is if we were broken into, and we would never tell anyone about the dvr. We were broken into three weeks before school was out, and they stole our dvr… maybe we should have hidden it better.</p>