Advice for sicurity: Miriam Tomponzi: some advice for having a safe summer We are now in the holiday season. Many people have already left, some are leaving soon, very many (one third more than last year) will remain at home. Not only those that are leaving, but also those remaining, will need to take a series of precautions in order to ensure their safety and the safety of their property. According to statistics gathered by the ISTAT and Tomponzi Investigations, it seems the number of thefts and aggressions during the summer has dramatically increased due to a lack of means of protection and the wrong prevention being taken, resulting often in dangerous situations. Here are a few suggestions to avoid getting in any big trouble. 1) As far as the house is concerned, in these days it is necessary to take adequate precautions. In 80% of the breaking and entering cases a medium size armored door is sufficient protection. (The cost is of about 2 million lire and it takes a whole day for the installation.) Another good security system is the ready to use alarms, they can be activated by simply putting a plug in the wall. (The cost is of about 2.500.000 lire.) Another excellent security system is a strong lighting system that illuminates the front of the house at night, especially if you live in an isolated area, the lighting makes it look like day time. Or the system can be installed on a timer, so when you are on holiday the lights turn on automatically at night making any ill-intentioned people think you are at home.. 2) For those remaining to work during the summer, often in large empty buildings. They must have a closed circuit video camera installed externally, (the whole system cost only a couple hundred thousand lire) so they can adequately control who comes to the door. A good solution is also having an automatic lock on the door that can be activated from a distance (too many people have been attacked after having opened the door for their assailants). A cellular phone is also very useful for calling for help from a safe area in the building. (It is especially useful if the aggressor is already in the building.) 3) Those of you that will be using credit cards and cash-cards, (in Italy 20 million people use both cards) will constantly be dodging thieves during the summer, the number of people in the cities and in vacation areas that use these methods of payment is growing considerably. Unfortunately this increase of card users does not correspond to the low number of careful card users. Here is some good advice: First of all, when inserting the card in the machine to retrieve money it is important that nobody is close by. Do not trust anybody how offers to help using of the cash-machine in case you have trouble with it. It is important to never leave credit cards laying around for a long period of time. (Especially when paying a hotel or restaurant bill, it is important to watch the manager during the payment: there were many similar cases last year, managers "cloning" credit cards.) 4) Those people leaving on trains or by car, will need to also take certain precautions: When travelling on trains, whether you are in a couchette or in coach, after obviously locking the door it is important to seal the spaces of the glass part of the door with tape: there were many cases reported last year of entire groups being "drugged" by special cylinders and robbed from head to foot. When travelling by car, it is necessary (according to the police reports) to be careful when stopping at gas stations and rest areas during the night and day. These are favorite spots for thieves, rapists and kidnappers, since parents often leave their children alone in the car in these areas.