You can take some simple steps to secure your valuables – and here are some cheap tips to help:
• Check the security of your house or flat when you arrive and raise any safety concerns with the landlord or halls manager immediately. If nothing happens straight away, follow up in writing.
Points to think about are outside lighting and exterior door access as well as security in your room.
If you have a bike or sports gear in outside storage, that needs to be secure as well.
• Lock doors and windows when you leave your room and check you have an internal lock as well.
If the landlord has not supplied locks for timber-framed windows, ask for them to be fitted or permission to fit them yourself. Locks cost a few pounds from any DIY store and the only tool required is a screwdriver.
• Make sure nothing valuable is on show through the window. Close curtains or hide valuables.
• Invest in a Kensington lock for your laptop. Back up your work and digital downloads daily to avoid buying cover. Services like iTunes will back up your entire music collection for around £25 a year and stream to any device.
Click here for more information about Kensington locks
• Keep a digital record of receipts, serial numbers, makes and models or gadgets online – Google Drive>/a>, Evernote or Dropbox are just three services that provide the space for free and you can access them from any browser if your PC, smartphone or tablet go missing.
You can also photograph credit cards etc and keep passwords in secure folders.
Picassa offers 5GB free for images – but you can also store them on Google Drive or Dropbox.
100GB of storage costs less than £10 a month on these services
• Don’t buy insurance you don’t need – double cover is expensive and not worth the cost.
Check with your parents to see if their home insurance offers you any cover while you live away at university.
If so, buy cover to plug the gaps, rather than expensive student contents insurance that adds little to what you already have
