My Computer Stolen By Burglars

[Ta22]

There is alot of Online backup service FREE>

eg. E_mail - Gmail offer 2GB . per account . Hotmail 1 GB . Yahoo1 GB

and photo Backup can be uploaded to maybe online free service .

all this is free if you have a internet connection and good speed to do it .

Get a DVD burner , you can backup 4gb plus of data . per disc ( don't get cheap Disc for importance data )

[qualtrough]

If you are going to buy a safe you should get one that three men cannot carry away. That is a really big safe so probably not doable for a normal home. If you own your own home I would suggest finding a location (under a stairwell perhaps, in a floor, etc.) where you can hide and encase the safe in rebar and concrete. I won't go into details, but that is basically what I did. Cannot tell from outside that a safe is even there, looks like something else. One other thing. Let nobody else know you have a safe, and make sure it is well hidden, otherwise you could end up in a situation where you or your loved one are being tortured/threatened for the combination.

Another option for a concrete home is to create a closet or small storage area enclosed in rebar and cement, and order up a steel door to your own design with good locks, etc. Yes, of course burglars could eventually break in, but most burglarys are snatch and grabs and they would not have the tools necessary to crack something tough.

Sorry to hear about your theft. I had a computer ripped off a few years back. Very courteous burglars, neatly removed everything, no mess, but I would still easily have ordered their deaths were it in my power.

[Ta22]

A big heavy safe is a good suggestion .

Ok . Some small safe have a GROUNDING hatch inside the Safe . - Is a Hole and a metal Plate . in the inner part of the safe which allow you to Bolt it on the ground . with the metal rod design in it .

The down side is you need to drill a hole on the ground . about 2cm - and at least 20 cm deep - using a split bolt you can secure the safe on the floor or Wooden backing.

there come in a few design . side grounding or bottom grounding .

is small and once it Bolt to the floor or wall . it almost impossible to move it .

even when is small unless there break in your house is a tractor .

Edited February 23, 2007 by Ta22

[p1p]

Meadish, you have my sincere deepest condolences. I wish I could help you in some way.

I was previously advised that most stolen items like computers are shipped immediately to Bangkok. However you could try contacting Khun Vichit in his shop Vichit Boregan. He is the chairman of the Pawnbrokers Association of Chiang Mai and has helped me out several times in the past. His shop is on Maninoppharat Road about half way between Chang Puak Gate and the North East corner of the moat. He is normally found sitting at his desk at the rear, right hand side of the shop. Be prepared to sit and chat a while. He is an interesting man and appreciates a bit of company.

Regarding safes, I have yet to find a truly secure one in Thailand, but they will all defeat the simple sneak thief, who wishes to be in and out quickly. The best guy to advise on safes runs a key shop on Chang Puak.(มิกกุญแจ) His shop is only about 100 metres up from the moat on the right hand side. (He succeeded in opening my safe for me when I had difficulties a while back. Possibly the only person in Thailand capable of doing so. The Bangkok firms I contacted refused to even try.)

CD/DVD backups are good, but be aware they do not last for very long. Some of my 2 to 3 year old backup disks have already degenerated and are difficult to read. I now use both external HD and frequent backups to DVD, with several copies of each important file.

Been trying to phone you, but I seem to have a wrong number. You have mine still, I hope.

[meadish_sweetball]

p1p - same number as before, just add an 8 in the appropriate place...

[Dustoff]

There is alot of Online backup service FREE>

eg. E_mail - Gmail offer 2GB . per account . Hotmail 1 GB . Yahoo1 GB

and photo Backup can be uploaded to maybe online free service .

all this is free if you have a internet connection and good speed to do it .

Yeah, Brinks/Boston can certainly recommend a site equally open to the public, eh?

NOT!

Common sense tells us, in this day and age of computer piracy and greed, that putting our most valued and private information/data out there into the public domain is likely not the way to ensure security! (altho I hear that Al-Kyda.com is very interested in offering free 'bang-up' service)...

Be inventive for sheet's sake!

Motion detectors and a doorbell that produces the bark of an incredibly huge dog thru your indoor stereo speakers (had that in Hawaii), find the weaknesses in your own space and see where YOU would choose to break in if you were locked out, put spare keys in your butt (or other reasonably inaccessible place) and not in the mailbox or on top of the doorframe, under the (appropriately named) welcome mat, etc..

Make SURE that there is absolutely NO WAY that you could gain access to your space if locked out, then make intelligent choices as to where there is a set or two of spare keys.

Did you know that you can unlock your remote-control locked car with your cellphone?

That by dialing a simple code you can access a 50% reserve battery power in your cellphone after it fails on you?

That you can keep any thief from ever using your stolen cellphone even with a new SIM card?

Technology is already there and built-in for us.. we just need to learn the ever-changing basics...

[mobile69]

Always toss my passport & other valuables on top of wardrobe or kitchen wall cupboards. Don't know if burglars would look up here, but the mrs certainly doesn't when cleaning..... wahahahaaha

ps please don't make this advice public....

pps will be moving my external back up hd soonish from next to the pc.

Edited February 23, 2007 by mobile69

[CM-Joe]

I am sory to hear that and wish you good luck for that you get back your laptop.

This also reminds me to save my datas and I guess I will buy an external disk for backup.

[Dustoff]

Did you know that you can unlock your remote-control locked car with your cellphone?

That by dialing a simple code you can access a 50% reserve battery power in your cellphone after it fails on you?

That you can keep any thief from ever using your stolen cellphone even with a new SIM card?

Please disregard the above, posted by me. It is only partially true and I should have checked it out before posting.

[Ta22]

i heard that some item can be Tag with a GPS - so even if stolen and disarmed you can track it using a gobal system .

alway see it in Spy movie abd of cos Jame bond and so on .. i wonder with techology price droping .. and better access to online device . if this is commercially produce and sold ..

Online storage is a pro and con ..

be smart about it .

abd break your data into Zip parts . which is unable to pen if you can have all the file - all you got to do is replace few file on difference server . - - i hope this would give you some idea.

My freinds store her company account online . using 5 zip file on 5 e-mail . need all to open . the full account .

she is she is working for a Large IT firm in singapore , gOt a T3 line at home .

Yes like the above said . most stolen goods is send to bangkok the very day ..

Transport - ( Siam first do Express service . - there might help you check out if any Laptop is send . )

sometime the box is send with no question ask . for only 50 baht to bangkok . so you might wanna scout it out .

check out the Pawn shop near lamphun - and if possible lampang .

you can jack a car using a clothes hanger . and many simple tool . and the alam nowaday people got to numb by it . sometime even ignore the alarm if it sound .

i once saw a car set off it alarm - on the road side . near 7-11 -

nobody came after 2 hour - after i finsh my dinner . -

Cheap car alarm is a risk . - i know my car alarm can open some other people cars .. cos i once went to airport plaza and when i press my remote . i hear at least 2 sound from two direction .

found that two other car respone to my remote whhaha

some years ago when i i stay in khao san and my guest house room got broken in and cleanme out of my digital cam , fav sunglasses ( rodenstock ) and many value item . the police did not even take finger print . and worst just came and smile and joke at each other and leave . that is when i can't speak thai

i learn my lesson since then .. thatonly you can protect yourself . not other people .

is better safe then sorry . Maybe i should set a Chopping knife trap if someone try to lift my TV or Computer his hand get chop that would warn a few people . so i can hang a signage saying .. CHOPPING KNIFE TRAP - BEWARE

[Tywais]

Did you know that you can unlock your remote-control locked car with your cellphone?

That by dialing a simple code you can access a 50% reserve battery power in your cellphone after it fails on you?

That you can keep any thief from ever using your stolen cellphone even with a new SIM card?

Please disregard the above, posted by me. It is only partially true and I should have checked it out before posting.

I didn't want to say anything since there is a recent topic on this. You can find a lot of hits in the urban legend area regarding the car door remote unlock. There has been a chain e-mail about this passed around for a long time now.

[britmaveric]

Sorry mate, good reminder for everyone make backups. I hope you recover your stolen goods.

[ronw]

Heard of several burglaries this week. Broad daylight.

Hate to be technical....but burglary is housebreaking AT NIGHT....ie..during the hours of darkness!!

Anyway, sorry to hear of your loss....Meadish....I have only had my house robbed once and that was enough.It is not only the loss of stuff....but the feeling of vulnerability which causes pain!

[Maejo Man]

Hate to be technical....but burglary is housebreaking AT NIGHT....ie..during the hours of darkness!!

Well you managed to get that one arse about face

[Maejo Man]

I have planned to get one as well. Would really appreciate details of what type of safe you ended up getting. (PM if you dont want to make the info public.)

I will do so shortly Meadish, as soon as I can find the keys to the safe that contains all the info.................

[richard10365]

If possible, can we make a map of the areas that have been burglarized and pin it to the top of the Chiang Mai forum.

Something like this could help future and current residents adjust their level of security appropriately.

[Mahseer]

I have one of the aforementioned Leeco safes which is 1mtr tall x 75cm square. It has a tumbler and 2 locks. Door has 2 hefty studs on each side and it weighs in the region of 150kg. It has a separate lockable small draw at the bottom and is big enough to take half a dozen laptops. Can access be obtained with a hammer and chisel? Well apparently so but what petty thief strolls around with such tools? A screwdriver and a jemmy likely but not certain what percentage pack the required tools and are willing to spend maybe 20 minutes in a location to smash open a safe which of course would create noise plus the lockable draw at the bottom would still not be accessible unless the entire side out of the safe was ripped open.

Cost was 10,000baht 3 years ago and it is also claimed to be fire proof. There are plenty on display in Chiang Moi both Leeco and other brands. Recommended? Of course. Absolutely guaranteed to protect your valuables? Obviously not but for 10k surely a sound investment.

[Khutan]

....Cost was 10,000baht 3 years ago and it is also claimed to be fire proof. There are plenty on display in Chiang Moi both Leeco and other brands. Recommended? Of course. Absolutely guaranteed to protect your valuables? Obviously not but for 10k surely a sound investment.

If I remember correctly, Safe's have two Ratings, one is the Fire Rating, that in a normal building fire, how long the Safe would resist the fire for. The second is the TL rating, That rating is how long the safe can resist someone the correct tools and training to open the safe, or at least remove the contents.

[JuniorExPat]

Always toss my passport & other valuables on top of wardrobe or kitchen wall cupboards. Don't know if burglars would look up here, but the mrs certainly doesn't when cleaning..... wahahahaaha

ps please don't make this advice public....

pps will be moving my external back up hd soonish from next to the pc.

'wahahahaaha'? Been on the fizzy pop mobile69?

Sorry for your bad luck Meadish, good luck with sorting it out.

JxP

[Mahseer]

I have one of the aforementioned Leeco safes which is 1mtr tall x 75cm square. It has a tumbler and 2 locks. Door has 2 hefty studs on each side and it weighs in the region of 150kg. It has a separate lockable small draw at the bottom and is big enough to take half a dozen laptops. Can access be obtained with a hammer and chisel? Well apparently so but what petty thief strolls around with such tools? A screwdriver and a jemmy likely but not certain what percentage pack the required tools and are willing to spend maybe 20 minutes in a location to smash open a safe which of course would create noise plus the lockable draw at the bottom would still not be accessible unless the entire side out of the safe was ripped open.

Cost was 10,000baht 3 years ago and it is also claimed to be fire proof. There are plenty on display in Chiang Moi both Leeco and other brands. Recommended? Of course. Absolutely guaranteed to protect your valuables? Obviously not but for 10k surely a sound investment.

Just to add that I can fit all myvaluables in a tea pot and I only bought such a large safe simply to stop it being thrown under an arm and disappearing out of a window. I've heard more than once of people buying the size of safe you see in hotel rooms and finding they are far to easily moved but of course it's all a matter of personal choice.

[just_Elaine]

Perhaps I'm a bit on the paranoid side, but we have a few boxes stacked up in the house. One day, the gardener kept trying to check out what was in them. I'd come by and the gardener would look the other way then I'd leave and when I came back again, I'd find the gardener right there at the window looking at the boxes. It happened a few times. My other half thought I shouldn't get so bent out of shape, but the gardener seemed way too interested or way too nosy. Finally, I just closed the shades. The other thing weird about the gardener (hired by the owner and comes to water every other day) is that I said 'sawadee, kha' to her one day and she didn't say anything... Just looked at me..maybe, just didn't understand me. I don't know. However, with all these robberies, I thought gardeners are great to 'case' peoples' houses. Just thought I'd mention it... Oh, not to say the gardener does the robberies, but maybe someone is paying them to give them information.

[Rasseru]

A question and a suggestion.

The question concerns secure storage. Is it possible here to rent at a bank a safety deposit box for storing valuables and, if so, what does it cost?

The suggestion concerns having back up hard drives. A couple of years ago, I lost a large amount of iTunes music files that I had not backed up. Fortunately, I still had all the CDs. After spending more than a month putting them all back on, and in particular after then selling the CDs, I decided to take steps to try to make sure I never lost such data again. I bought two separate hard drives to use for back up purposes. I keep one at home, in a separate place from my computer, and one at a friend's house, figuring two places will almost certainly not get burgled on the same day. I was going to stop there, but it's not quite a suggestion yet, so: suggest others consider the same approach.

[mallmagician]

How about an online data storage solution?

There are obvious ones like Flickr to store your photo's (but space is limited unless you subscribe). One way to get around this limit, is to store your photo's with people like Photobox, some give unlimited storage for photo's in the hope you get prints from them.

For other data, try http://www.xdrive.com/

Just a thought.

Cheers

Phil

[mallmagician]

Further to my above post,

A few reviews of online storage solutions:-

http://www.consumersearch.com/www/internet...ices/index.html

Cheers

Phil

[SoloFlyer]

RE Xdrive - subscribed to this a coupla years ago, basically for music sharing. Idea was good, execution terrible. There connection always cuts out when uploading making it un-rothwhile. Abandoned it for over a year and recently went back for another look given better net connections here ... no improvemtnets, sorry to say.

[mallmagician]

RE Xdrive - subscribed to this a coupla years ago, basically for music sharing. Idea was good, execution terrible. There connection always cuts out when uploading making it un-rothwhile. Abandoned it for over a year and recently went back for another look given better net connections here ... no improvemtnets, sorry to say.

IBackup looks more reliable according to reviews.

Condolences for the loss to the O/P by the way. Sorry to contribute to off topic threads>

I don't backup my PC at all, so this has prompted me to start with important stuff. I am going to give my own suggestion a try.

Cheers

Phil

[p1p]

Among my other business interests, I am a director of a security company in London dealing in physical security systems, including safes. If enough people are interested, I could arrange to ship a small, 20 foot, container to Chiang Mai, filled with safes far more secure than anything available in Thailand. I could supply fully reconditioned second hand, or new.

(For example, my safe weighs over 500 Kilos and is a Chubb bankers safe. My partner rates safes in terms of cigarettes to hours. Most Thai safes he has seen can be opened in less than half a cigarette. Mine he rates at 28 hours. It cost me £4,000, second hand through the trade in London.)

If I remember correctly, Safe's have two Ratings, one is the Fire Rating, that in a normal building fire, how long the Safe would resist the fire for. The second is the TL rating, That rating is how long the safe can resist someone the correct tools and training to open the safe, or at least remove the contents.

Safes are rated differently depending on the market in which they are sold. The UK has different rating systems than, for example the US, France or Germany etc. All safes are rated both for fire resistance and resistance to unauthorised entry.

For fires, they are rated according to the heat of fire they can resist and the length of time they resist it. These temperature ratings are tested in a furnace and run from approximately 200 Celcius up to about 1,100 Celcius and give ratings from 5 minutes to 4 hours. The certificate on the safe will read "Fire Resistance: Rating: Class XXX Temperature- XX Time" and will give details of the certificating and testing authorities. (There are also impact and explosion tests and certifications that these may be subject to.)

You need to be aware that some products may be labeled "Tested to 1,000 Celcius" or something. This is permitted even if they failed the test.

Regarding security from theft. The UK uses a classification depending on the time taken for a professional safe cracker to open it using the tools of his trade. Safes used in a home or small business can rate from a Residential Safety Container (RSC) rating, able to withstand about 5 minutes, up to TL 30 (over half an hour) or more.

For businesses neding more security, banks, gold shops etc, the rating is given a monetary insurance value for items that can be stored therein. This value can vary from £100 or so for most residential safes, up to £500,000 or more, for professional bankers safes. Insurance companies will normally cover up to ten times the value limit set on a safe. So you will be covered up to £1,000 if your safe has a £100 value limit.

[cdnvic]

The other thing weird about the gardener (hired by the owner and comes to water every other day) is that I said 'sawadee, kha' to her one day and she didn't say anything... Just looked at me..maybe, just didn't understand me.

Probably Burmese.

[Phil Conners]

... Can access be obtained with a hammer and chisel? Well apparently so but what petty thief strolls around with such tools? A screwdriver and a jemmy likely but not certain what percentage pack the required tools and are willing to spend maybe 20 minutes in a location to smash open a safe which of course would create noise plus the lockable draw at the bottom would still not be accessible unless the entire side out of the safe was ripped open.

An angle grinder can cut up the metal in about 2 minutes. A hammer and chisel can break the concrete in another 2 minutes. The tools necessary cost nothing in Thailand. Angle grinders are about 500 baht. Crooks are not (always) stupid, don't fool yourself.

[Ulysses G.]

My condolences.

A Thai freind who knows about such things says that a lot of local thieves know how to "crack" safes, so not to rely to much on them.

It sounds like p1p's imported safes might be worth the money.