Shoppers warned to always click certain button when buying online to stop porch pirates after 120.5m packages are stolen

Shoppers have been advised to always click a specific button when making purchases online in order to protect themselves from porch pirates.

A total of 120.5 million goods, valued at over $16 billion, were stolen from American porches last year.

Customers have been advised to protect their online purchases from thieves as the holidays draw near.

According to experts, there are two essential actions you should take to protect your belongings from porch pirates.

One way to increase your chances of being there when your shipment is delivered is to click the button to enable delivery alerts.

In order to create a paper trail, the second crucial step is to require signatures when your things arrive.

Using security technologies like cameras and motion detectors to capture the pirates in the act is one of the other actions suggested by the research from the security firm SafeWise.

Additionally, the research suggests that customers plan for other delivery arrangements, such as checking in with a friend or neighbor or using a safe locker.

According to the report, “people are busier this time of year and have their routine shifted as they may work later and spend more time away from home shopping or visiting with family and friends, so packages are left sitting exposed on the porch for longer,” writes Ben Stickle, a package theft expert and professor at Middle Tennessee State University.

84% of respondents to the annual report’s poll stated that they had implemented a deterrent following a package theft.

The most popular solutions were installing video doorbells or security cameras.

New York City suffered losses of around $1 billion, making it the most financially affected city in the United States.

Chicago ($262m) and Philadelphia ($450m) were among the other large cities that were affected.

Houston ($207m) and Washington DC ($232m) comprised the remaining top five in terms of finances.

However, with almost 1,400 thefts per 1,000 households, Cleveland, Ohio, was the most afflicted city in the top 10 per capita.

This implies that some homes were broken into more than once.

Porch piracy rates in other smaller cities were lower in terms of money, but they were still greater per capita.

With an astounding 2,391 incidences per 1,000 households, Beckley, West Carolina, was the most severely afflicted location in the United States.

The top three hotspots were rounded out by Goldsboro, North Carolina (1,880 per 1,000), and Hot Springs, Arkansas (2,107 per 1,000 households).

There was some positive news in the report, though, since the quantity of shipments taken was essentially unchanged from the year before.

Around one million more thefts occurred, which SafeWise attributed to population growth rather than an increase in crime.

An online resource for security and safety items is called SafeWise. The website used data from its own survey, an independent safety survey, and FBI crime statistics to calculate its annual rankings.

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