There are security films which when properly applied to windows and anchored to the frame can stop a bullet (well maybe just one bullet), that would be preferable to bars on the windows. With CFL lights, there's no reason why you can't have decent outdoor lighting throughout the night, that and thorny bushes in appropriate locations would be preferable to turning your front yard into a jail yard. Alarm systems have modems and simply call in the alerts to the monitoring company, you can program the alarm systems to call your cell phone or a number of different cell phones instead and you can decide on the level of response required.
If you must have them monitored there are inexpensive automated alarm monitoring services available over the Internet which basically send out text or email messages when the alarm occurs and logs them for a low monthly fee. To program these alarm systems, you need the real master code, not the one they give the homeowner as the master code, many alarm companies won't give you the code as they use the same code for all of the properties that they monitor but if the alarm system is your property, you have a right to insist that they reprogram it to a random master code and give you that code or reprogram it back to the factory default. The Internet alarm companies have guides you can download on how to guess what that master code might be, a time consuming process but well worth the trouble.
With a lot of homes, the phone line just comes out of the wall in the side of the house and a burglar can just cut it right there before entering the home. Alarm companies will try to sell you on a system that makes the call on a cell phone but that's just another cell phone contract to pay. I had a padlocked box installed over the cable entry and the lines put into an armoured conduit till it was well into the ground.
Won't stop a determined burglar but one with a pair of wire cutters would probably just move on to the next house. The best thing is to start with an alarm system that an alarm company never touched but then you have to learn about how to hook it up and how to correctly balance the terminating resistors such that a burglar can't just bypass the sensors by twisting some wires together. Learn about how locks work or find a locksmith that you can trust and go through the pins in all your locks.
When builder's build houses, they master key the properties and have what are called protecto balls put in (Kwikset calls them protecto balls), this results in a builder's master key or a series of master keys that the builder's can give out during the various phases of construction with the use of one key disabling the future use of a previous key. Use of the homeowner's keys disables all the builder's keys but the master pins are still in there so a savvy construction worker could have a set of five or six keys based on his issued builder's key that will open the houses in the neighborhood after the homeowner's key has disabled the builder's key. Also the builder's will often have omitted one of the pins from some of the locks and would've pocketed the anti-pick security pins that came with the locks so that they can make selected locks (their own locks) secure while leaving those in the house insecure.
The locks on my house came from the lock manufacturer with three anti-pick pins in each of them but I only found one such pin in all six locks. Having mushroom head and spool pins put back into the lock will make them much more secure against both lock picking and lock bumping.
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