The article is frustratingly vague about what the actual strategies used by burglars are, giving little useful information about what can be done to blunt your losses.
Instead, Nee says one trick could be to find something unexpected that doesn’t fit the usual script of a crime, breaking the burglar out of the automatic, below-conscious processing. “That’s likely to make them abandon the crime,” Nee suggests. Playing a recording of someone’s footsteps, or even something as simple as gentle white noise, might be distracting enough to perturb the burglar. Equally, you could lay out your house in a distinct way – anything that confuses their automatic mental maps. “The thing is, you have to be innovative over time because burglars will get used to whatever you do,” she says.
and
For the time being, there are some easy measures that we could all take. Besides the obvious (remembering to close windows and lock doors) Nee thinks one of the best strategies is to pretend that someone is always in the house; almost all the burglars she has interviewed report that they will do anything to avoid a face-to-face encounter
whatever you do, you have to keep changing it, because burglars will get used to it.
Excuse me? If you have that much burglar traffic in your home, maybe you ought to just move.
For example, it could be recommended to install motion-sensing lights. Burglars figure out dead zones to those lights to avoid them. Then you upgrade to a video feed. Then burglars figure out those dead zones. Then you upgrade to cameras on a timed swivel. And so on...
I think.
Particularly strong in Texas, at least until the law is judicially nullified as it's been in other states in the nation like Oklahoma, where you to can use lethal force to stop a theft, as in someone walking away holding your TV, after a verbal warning.
If so, then I think you should consider moving again. Sooner rather than later.
If it was a while ago, did you have any more problems?
With chip and pin cards it would be even easier, a card with the chip programmed to alert the cashier when ever it is used.
Yes, it worked.
My vague takeaway is that burglars rely on patterns of typical household layouts and homeowner behaviors so that they can do their work, as it were, at a higher level of abstraction than an amateur can. Anything that you can do to frustrate their assumptions of typicality, then, might lower their efficiency or discourage them from attempting a burglary in the first place. Perhaps some clever applications of home automation tech could be employed. Or if you're fortunate enough to keep an inconsistent schedule, that too could help.
My personal tip: when away from home for a while, I try to leave an electric timer connected to a light.
I also use a timer-based radio tuned to a channel with lots of speaking (rather than music). Just be careful. I once left it too loud and the neighbours downstairs complained... (luckily it was running on my pc, so I could ssh into it and turn the volume down remotely).
They have an "away" mode where it will randomize the circuit it's connected to during the normal evening hours after sunset.