Research suggests that vacations can be good for your health. They’re a time to rest, relax, regroup and recharge—a respite from the everyday stressors at work and at home.
To help make sure the health benefits gained from your vacation aren’t eclipsed by new stressors as soon as you get home, the Department of Information Technology – Information Security at Cooper University Hospital suggests taking these steps before going on vacation or otherwise leaving your home unattended:
- Arrange for a trusted neighbor or friend to pick up your mail daily. Or, you can temporarily discontinue your postal service. It’s easy to put your mail on hold at www.usps.gov.
- If you have an answering machine, don’t change your message to tell callers and potential burglars that you’re on vacation. Instead, set it to claim you’re on the other line or use some other message indicating you’re still at home.
- Ask a trusted friend or neighbor to check on your home and remove any flyers or other materials that might get put on your doorstep and announce that no one’s home.
- Cancel any services that require access to your home or yard, such as lawn care, pool cleaning, house cleaning, etc.
- Exception to the above: Arrange for someone to mow the lawn if you’ll be gone for an extended period.
- Don’t leave emergency keys hidden outside the house; burglars will find them.
- Don’t tell alarm services you’ll be gone; this information shouldn’t make any difference in how they do their job.
- If there’s anything in the house you can’t live without, put it in a safety deposit box, or, better yet, leave it with a trusted relative. Think about what could happen if burglars stole your safety deposit box containing your will, Social Security card, birth certificate and other important documents.
- Back up your computer files and store the back-up somewhere else, such as with a relative or in a safety deposit box. Think about what could happen if burglars stole your computer with all your tax returns on the drive. Remember, burglars will steal anything and examine it later, so they could also steal back-up CDs and external drives that they can find. They have all day to look around for stuff because you aren’t home.
- Change the combination on alarms and safes. You never know who might have found out your combinations and is waiting for you to be away from home.
- Don’t forget to secure windows and doors that are above ground level; burglars can use ladders while disguised as roofers or electricians.
- Bring along with you numbers for your local fire and police departments.
- Be prepared to cancel all your cards—credit cards, ATM cards, etc. Write down phone numbers and card numbers for each, and store the list of numbers off-site.
- Turn off your WiFi, DSL or cable modems, etc., to prevent hackers from entering your system while you’re away, as well as wireless network invaders who can use your computer for nefarious purposes.
- Test your alarms (fire and burglar) and replace any batteries that are low.
- Unplug any electronics that don’t need to be running to prevent fire and lightning damage.