AXA home insurance has argued that satellite navigation devices are contributing to a growing number of house burglaries in the UK and is urging consumers to change their ‘home’ address on their SatNavs to cut down on linked crimes.

In the last five years SatNav ownership has risen from around 13% to around half the adult population and with it the number of related claims, AXA says.

Statistics from the insurance firm suggest that around 25 million of us will use some form of SatNav in our cars (either fixed/portable or on a mobile phone) and over half (13 million) will have our home address programmed into the device. Of these, two thirds have either never even thought about it as a security risk or if they have, have not been worried enough to do anything about it.

12 million people who own a SatNav device will leave it in their car, with around three million of these being built in. Also, around 17% (8.5 million) of us will also leave house keys in cars while nearly one in five (9.5 million people) will leave keys hidden outside our property.

Christine Matthews, head of household claims at AXA said: “Careless security surrounding your Sat Nav will provide any opportunistic burglar with everything they need. If the car is not at the inputted ‘home’ address then they’ll be able to target your house