Adt Alarm Installer Codes

Thanks to the technified world we live in today, your options for securing your home range from 'lock your doors at night' to 'spend absurd amounts of money on robots that'll scream at burglars if they try to break in.' But as long as pesky laws keep us from arming these bots with rotary chain guns, you'll still be relying on the system's manufacturer to listen for that alarm and do something about it.The biggest player in this market is ADT.

You've probably seen their TV commercials, which feature relieved housewives talking about how their home alarm system saved them from certain death and/or torture. Something has always seemed a bit off with those ads, so we talked to Carlos Murillo, who worked behind the scenes at the company. Warning: YouTube may show you an ad before showing you this ad.Here's the reality: Even if you're lucky enough to live in an area where cops respond to alarms (and we'll have more on that in a moment), they still may not respond quickly enough. The alarm doesn't summon police directly, you see - it alerts our call center. Then, someone at that center phones you. He or she waits for you to pick up so they can ask if you're aware that the alarm is going off.

The company only goes to the next step if you say that something's wrong, give an incorrect verbal password (pre-established to make sure you're not a burglar in a wig), or fail to answer the phone. Often, that next step is calling a second number. Many police departments force alarm companies to try two numbers to reach the homeowner, a consequence of these systems generating so many false alarms (and I'll have more to say about that, too). The cops don't want to send out a car unless they're really sure. Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama each have a statewide rule for this. If you can't provide a second number (because, say, you live alone and don't know your immediate neighbors), the police won't come, period. Those lonely hermits with no friends and only one number to call?

Any good hermit should have booby-trapped their front door with a dangling shotgun.poplasen/iStock/Getty Images.Do not plant booby traps around your home. On the flipside, you can give us four or five numbers to call, which is an equally terrible idea. Think of it this way: If nobody picks up, that's 30 seconds of ringing, maybe 10-20 seconds of the recording explaining the person can't get to the phone right now, and then the time it takes to leave a message detailing what's going on. So by the time the agencies are contacted, around five or six minutes have passed, which is a big deal in a real emergency.So only after the alarm company fails to reach anyone does a call go to the police. Burglar alarms are low-priority, and dispatchers are snappy and curt when we call. I honestly can't blame them - considering the alarms are only rarely the result of an actual crime, we're mostly a costly annoyance.

And when the police are set off, that can take the most time of all because the response time depends on the availability of the nearest patrol car.TNTbombdotcom/iStock/Getty Images'You got any loft rentals above the station?' ADT burglar alarms are extremely sensitive - that part of the ads is true - but as a result, they're going off constantly. False alarms are such a big problem that ADT has a specifically about them.

But it's an even bigger issue than they admit publicly: According to official internal statistics, 99 percent of our alerts are false alarms. Sure, the system can pick up motion when the system is armed and you're out, but it also goes off whenever something hits a panel.

Or kids are running around. Or because of pets (the most common culprits). Powerful sneezes can sometimes set burglar alarm systems off. That's not a joke; we have shock sensors for doors and windows, and if you let off a particularly strong one nearby, it can get you a call from our dispatchers.LuckyBusiness/iStock/Getty ImagesDo not have sex within five yards of a panel. And believe me, it can get annoying. Imagine this going off every time your cat or dog crosses the house:Next, imagine the dog's reaction.All this alarmitude might seem like overkill, but security companies make sensitive burglar alarms because that's the sort people buy. 'Better safe than sorry,' we (rightly) assume the customers will mutter to themselves.

In reality, oversensitive systems make everyone unsafe. In cities like and, police departments are so sick of security systems crying wolf that they'll no longer respond to a call about a home burglar alarm unless they get a separate call verifying that a burglary really is in progress. These cities do this because they're the ones with the most crime and the most need to divert those cops elsewhere - but they're also where you're most likely to get burgled. You can't blame the cops for this, either. They're already struggling to work with limited resources, and having to visit the same house several times because of allergy season is a huge waste of time and money. And they'll gladly pass that cost to you.

As says, 'false alarm fees can cost you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.' So yeah, the system may very well deter an intruder, but you also might end up going bankrupt because your cat is an asshole (you know he's doing that shit intentionally).Yi Chen/iStock/Getty ImagesADT: Unmatched against cat burglars.

It's hilarious how wrong that depiction is. Like, that's the photoshopped 'after' picture, and we're the 'before.'

In reality, our 'headquarters' is an office call center, except even less formal (jeans and a T-shirt are my go-to clothing choice). We eat at our cubicles, we listen to music. Hell, we have pizza parties like the kind you'd win in middle school if your class did the most fundraising. So it's not much different from where many of you are reading this right now, only our callers might have a murderer in their house. For instance, if a crazed criminal breaks into your home and hears the alarm go off, he may decide to put a gun to your head and tell you to disable the system. It's a terrifying scenario, but it's common enough that we need to have a safety measure. For these cases, ADT provides a '.'

Enter that instead of the disable code, and the system appears to disarm but actually sends a silent alarm to ADT's monitoring center. We contact the police immediately and describe a robbery in progress, and that's as high-priority as a direct 911 dial. That's all well and good. If you're composed enough to enter the code properly. And if the robber doesn't know the code already and retaliate when he sees what you're doing - ADT's default duress code, which you're supposed to change, is freely available on the Internet for any enterprising bad guy to look up. Oh, and if the code doesn't just fail, which it does sometimes. There have been cases where people were confronted by an intruder and entered the duress code, at which point they stalled as long as possible, awaiting their heroes and wondering with growing panic why they didn't hear sirens.

The horrible reason no one came? There was a mistake. We either never set up a duress code on our end or the tech didn't program it in, so the transmission seemed like a weird, out-of-place signal. So instead of calling the police, we attempted to call the customer about it while they were being held at gunpoint.JuliaAlbul/iStock/Getty Images'No answer. ADT controls of the home security market. In practice, depending on your area, they may hold much more than that - kind of like how Comcast allegedly controls no more than 30 percent of the cable market but may be your only choice. In previous years, ADT has been legally found to have held monopolies in 27 cities and was forced to leave them.

Their revenue, thanks to a bunch of smaller providers like Defender, Security Systems and Monitoring, and Protect Your Home, all of which provide ADT products and services. If this sounds suspiciously deceptive, that's because it totally is. We're specifically told not to mention ADT if we need to talk to customers who are using these dealer companies.Fuse/Fuse/Getty Images'Oh, you're with TotallyNotADT? I can help you with that!Or I can recommend an alternative: DefintelyNotADT.' And you can bet that's not the only legal action we're facing. A seeks damages for ADT's deceptive marketing because the company claims that its systems are secure from hackers.

The signals are in fact unsecured and unauthenticated and can be manipulated by software-defined radio (SDR) with a device that costs about $10. Hackers can use such a device to from a house away or even monitor you while you're inside your own home.But trust me, some of our competition is even shadier. In Utah, have reported 'salesmen' who arrived claiming to be from their current provider, there to upgrade the hardware.

The homeowner would scratch their chin and say, 'Huh, you're not the usual tech guy,' but they'd let the invaders go ahead. The salesmen then, and without even realizing it, the customer had switched over to a new company.

You might think that's a local problem, but you'd be wrong. Is a issue, and it's not getting any better.

Adt Alarm Installer Codes 1

Hell, ADT even made a video to teach you how to not get conned by these scumbags. There is as to whether or not alarm systems are worth it. It comes down to the cost - it's not like having one is going to make your house more likely to get broken into.

And if a burglar must choose between a house with an ADT sign out front or one without, he'll probably pick the latter (though it also works if you replace 'ADT sign' with 'mean-looking dog'). High-end packages start from $70 a month plus installation and equipment, and ultimately, what you're paying for is a deterrent that might, in the process, make the police hate you.ScorpionPL/iStock/Getty ImagesADT doesn't sell an anti-cop alarm, but we're working on it. In many cases like this (and in every case that gets picked up by the local news), ADT awards the fire department $5,000 for their efforts, holds a big ceremony, and flies out the agent who called the customer to be at the event.

Adt Alarm Code 11

Some cynical people might say that this is all a marketing move, but I like to think it's because the company takes as much pride as it can in our work. We're saving lives, after all, even amidst all those false alarms and fear-mongering ads.Jupiterimages/Stockbyte/Getty ImagesWhen you're on the side of the firefighters, you're kind of a hero.