This post was updated at 7:50pm on April 28th: Northumbria Police have confirmed a local business, marketing their wares, were responsible for attaching the buttons to residents’ doors. Twitter users then conflated the buttons with a longstanding urban myth. The police refused to confirm to
JesmondLocal which company was behind the buttons.

Northumbria Police have reassured Jesmond residents worried about buttons stuck to the doors of their homes.

Yesterday, a number of West Jesmond residents took to Twitter to warn of one or a number of people attaching buttons to homes in the area. The tweets hypothesised that it was the work of a gang of thieves indicating vulnerable homes.

Fellow Jesmond friends, thieves are using buttons to mark houses.

— Thomas Alan (@_thomasalan) April 28, 2015

Someone’s been round West Jesmond and stuck red buttons on student house doors. Sleeping easy tonight… #targeted

— Tim Hardy (@timhardy94) April 27, 2015

But police believe that the buttons are likely a prank – and one that Snopes, a website that investigates and tracks urban myths – has seen before. As the mythbusting website notes, “there’s no practical reason for persons seeking to perpetrate crimes against property to surreptitiously mark the homes of their intended victims rather than simply recording the addresses of those homes.”

“We don’t believe there is any increased risk of burglaries or crimes in the affected areas,” said Newcastle Inspector Neil Brotherton, “however we’d like to remind people, especially students, about how important crime prevention is. Make sure doors and windows are locked and secure and that all valuables are kept somewhere safe and not left in plain view near windows or in the car.

“We have had no reported crimes linked to the locations of the buttons and at this stage we think that it could be some kind of prank or promotion/marketing activity. We are making enquiries in the local area to establish this so we can let people know why this is being done.”

Anyone know why someone has blu tacked luminescent buttons onto people front doors in jesmond? #curious

— Carla Roanne (@carlaroanne) April 27, 2015

Inspector Brotherton added that “It’s very unusual and we are carrying out enquiries into this to find out who has done this, and why.”

The buttons, if a prank, could be linked to a recent spate of stories about the secret codes and symbols used by burglars in the UK. The Telegraph reported in January 2015 of “sophisticated gangs of dog thieves…using clandestine signals to mark homes”.

The latest such story, focused more generally on thieves, was published by popular free weekly magazine Shortlist just over a week ago.

Anyone with information about who has attached the buttons to doors is asked to contact police on 101.