Porch pirates, or people who steal your packages off your front porch, are a serious problem in the age of Amazon. You’re likely to have dozens of packages delivered to your front door every year, and each one that gets dropped off while you’re at work is liable to be stolen by a ne’er-do-well. How can you protect your property and ensure your stuff doesn’t get pilfered?
Protecting Your Packages from Porch Pirates
Amazon Key
One of the most direct ways to address this problem is to sign up for Amazon Key. A variant of the Amazon Cloud Cam, this service allows you to give Amazon delivery employees access to drop your packages off inside your home. You can use the Cloud Cam functionality and your smart home’s smart key to grant them entry to drop off your package, and then use the smart key to digitally lock back up when they leave.
One of the best things about the Cloud Cam set up is that it allows you to see the delivery person, grant them access (or not) and then lock back up. You can see your home and your package the whole time, and there’s no chance for anyone to just slip up can easily steal off with your package: they’d have to just break into your home, which is far less likely.
Box Lock
A similar solution is to use a delivery box located on your porch to take your deliveries. If you have concerns about smart locks and letting strangers into your home, this is a similar alternative that locks your packages up without giving anyone access to your home. Firstly, you need a smart lock like BoxLock, or a similar product.
BoxLock works by connecting to the paired app via wi-fi, allowing you to enter your pending deliveries. Then, when the delivery person arrives, they can use the BoxLock to scan the package, which temporarily unlocks it and allows them to put your package in the strongbox. Then, the lock automatically closes back up when they leave. This way, your packages are safely locked up, and no one had to enter your home.
Security Cam
A more old-school, and direct, way to deter (and detect) thieves is to just install a security camera. This does a few things that help secure your packages. Firstly, it acts as a strong deterrent: most thieves aren’t dedicated enough to stealing your stuff to hazard getting caught on camera doing so. Merely seeing the camera is usually enough to convince them to move on to another would-be victim.
Secondly, and most directly, if they do go through with stealing your stuff, you’ll have video evidence of the event. You’ll be able to show the police the image of the person stealing your property, and this makes it that much more likely the person will get caught. You might even get your stuff back!
Video Doorbell
Along the same lines as a security camera, you could get a video doorbell service like Ring. These services are much more discreet in appearance than a security camera, though they’re great for keeping tabs on your home from a distance. Several video doorbells can be installed with motion detection, so they’ll ping you when someone is on your porch, and they can even start recording when someone walks up.
Once you see that someone is on your porch, if it’s someone stealing your package, you can actually talk to them through most video doorbells. Often, this alone is enough to scare off petty crooks: hearing your voice, knowing they’re being watched, is typically a big enough scare to get them to move on to some other, less well-monitored mark.