What It Means If You Find Tape Stuck To Your Front Door

Picture it: You pull into your driveway after a long day at work and roll out of the car onto your feet, exhausted. You drag yourself up the front steps and try to put your key in your deadbolt lock. And it doesn't work. You think you're just slightly delirious, but after a few more tries you peer at the lock and see that there's a strip of clear tape covering the keyhole. A million theories race through your mind, but in the end, you have no idea why this is happening. Some people, including police departments, think they do know, though: Someone is planning a burglary and wants to know if you've been home.

That situation would obviously be pretty alarming. News stories about this phenomenon crop up every few years all over the globe, from Dublin to Fresno. By all accounts, the situation is real. Homeowners do find tape over their door locks. Exactly what's going on with the tape, though, still holds some mystery. The "someone's casing the joint" theory is only one of many explanations floated for the situation, though it's the most common. But he theory that thieves are monitoring your door to see when you come home does raise a few questions, aside from the fact that there are better ways for burglars to tell no one is home.

The key challenge to the super-organized burglar theory is, what if the homeowner uses a different door, such as a garage entrance? But all the theories seem to have potential flaws. Another notion is that the tape is to slow you down so that thieves, who are already in your home, will hear you fumbling with the tape and have time to get away. Both theories suffer from the fact that there don't appear to be any confirmed incidents of either. There are cases in which the police might issue a warning about burglars, but those are usually speculative. They don't seem any more certain that anyone else about what's happening — they just think you should be cautious.

Other theories involve everyone from animal welfare groups to gypsies. One Quora user says the English RSPCA uses this trick to find out if someone is around to care for your pets. Reedley, California police say that private investigators might be keeping tabs on you. Others say it's process servers. Some claim it's wanderers or gypsies, who reportedly relay information to their compatriots via markings, tape, or even kidney beans on your stoop. It's hard to find evidence for any of these ideas, or for others, like those who say it's part of a method used to aid in picking your locks. But a vanishingly small number of break-ins happen by lock-picking, and we couldn't track down any way taping a keyhole could actually help lock-pickers.

Frank Wills called the police to report the 1972 Watergate burglary because he noticed a piece of tape on a stairwell door lock in the hotel. Police also found tape on two other stairwell doors, leading investigators directly to the burglars. Wills' diligence caught some burglars and toppled a president. He had the right idea: If you find tape on your locks, let the police know. It's their job to evaluate how seriously to take the situation, but if no one ever reports the issue, they'll never know how serious it really is.

In 2020, a Reddit user from Sacramento caught someone on his doorbell camera putting tape on his lock. The person appears to be carrying a roll of masking tape, and they open the homeowner's gate and handle the tape with what appears to be un-gloved hands. Obviously, locking your doors in the first place is the easiest way to make your home more secure. Once you do have a problem like taped locks, the best approach is to trust the crime-fighting professionals, who have training, information networks, and better means to actually do something about the problem.