I have a dumb habit. Every time I enter any store which sells gun safes, I immediately check for personal exposure. I have blogged about this before. Today, I want to take things a step further. While walking through a store this week, I observed the following receipt taped to a large gun safe.

This $1600 gun safe is on layaway. Instead of setting it in the back, the store personnel simply taped a receipt on it displaying the future owners name and cell number. Let's query the number through a caller ID database.

We now know that "Allen" (from the receipt) likely has a spouse named "Hannah" (the cell phone owner), and I know the county they likely live in. A property search for those names in that county reveals the following.

I now know the likely location where this gun safe will be delivered in the near future. However, that does not get me INSIDE the safe. I tried another tactic. The following was displayed right next to the previous safe.

Once again, I have the name of the owner, but this time the sales associate was kind enough to include both a landline and cell on the ticket. The cell comes back to:

However, the landline returns to a small gun shop in the county (which had recently been burglarized):

I asked an associate if I could see the inside of the safe, as I was considering purchasing an identical unit. My hope was that the combination was present inside. Instead, she walked to the back and returned with all of the paperwork from that safe. As she entered the combination, she made sure to read it aloud for me to copy. If I were a burglar, I would have a new target for a safe-full of guns. Surprisingly, most owners of programmable safes never change the combination.

Please everyone, only purchase a gun safe with cash on the day you will retrieve it. Do not provide any name or loyalty number. If allowed, change the combination before use.