AMC Insurance

Halloween is coming up quickly and all over neighborhoods scary displays are beginning to appear.  It is a time of year that all kids look forward to.  As parents we know the torment of watching them go back and forth on deciding what costume they will wear.  Will it be a fireman or a super hero, a princess or a ballerina, and even a zombie or a jedi.  What they wear has more to it than just the costume, safety needs to be considered.  Here are some Halloween safety tips to help make this year a little safer. Plan Your Route The act of going out on Halloween is likely going to cover many streets.  Take a few minutes to plan your route taking in account the length of the journey, dark unlit areas, parks and busy roads.  Once you have your route ensure that it is known so that in case of emergency you are not hard to locate. Visibility When you’re heading out after dark, being seen is the highest priority in safety. Wearing light-coloured clothing, using reflective stickers or

I have been involved in computers my entire life and one thing that always makes me shake my heads is what people choose for passwords.  Some people put no effort into coming up with a password at all and it is dangerous.  In this era where we have had Sony, Gmail and most recently Equifax hacked and the personal information of millions of users breached, why would you not do what you can to secure your information.  Here are some simple tips for a safe password. Variety A secure password is like a good dinner, not all of it is one thing.  Choose a combination of numbers, letters, special characters and capitals.   If your password is a simple word or even two words put together you put yourself at risk of a dictionary hack or brute force attack. Take it even a step further and replace letters with numbers so that your password could be remembered like a simple word but in reality it would look like this Ch0c0l@t3 instead of chocolate. Size Matters As with many things in l

We are now in Canada’s Fire Prevention Week. This is an opportunity for homeowners to assess home fire safety and make sure the whole family knows what to do in the event of a fire. All home insurance policies will cover damage caused by fire and comprehensive vehicle insurance will cover fire damage to a car or truck. In addition to insurance coverage, it’s important to be fire smart, which includes installing and checking fire-safety devices in a home and creating a fire-evacuation plan. Installing fire-safety devices Smoke detectors Smoke detectors can expire, not joking. Everyone knows that smoke detectors need to be checked twice a year to replace batteries.  Use that as an opportunity to also check your detector’s expiration date. Most smoke detectors on the market will normally have a life span of 10 years but some models may expire within five years so use the time when changing the batteries to check.  You can normally find the manufacture date where the batteries a