I have just started to play UO again from about 5 years ago. I just need to know if you can still lock down items in your house. Did they make any changes to this system? If you drop an item in your house does it lock automatically? Or, do you have to lock it? Can you drop an item in your house and have anyone else pick it up?

You can still lock items down. Place the item on the ground and say "I wish to lock this down" and a cursor will come up. Target what you want to lock down. No one can pick it up. When you want to unlock it say "I wish to release this". This is usually used for stationary furniture now.

Something new for you perhaps is secured containers. You can place a container on the ground and say "I wish to secure this". You can now put your items in it and retrieve them with out unlocking them. You can also set the security on it so only you can look in it, or your co-owner and you, friends, guild members (which I think is bugged) or anyone who comes into your house.

Hope that helps!

I am concerned that when I release the items, that somebody might take it.

Now you can set the security to your doors so no one but friends can come in You can also set your house to private so no one can come in the house unless you friend them to the house. This eliminates those old house hiders, unless you leave your house public.. But now I don't think many people even try it any more because of all these new security features.

These options are in the housing menu located on your sign, lower left corner of the house.

If you wish to be absolutely certain that there are no unwelcome guests in your home, you can use the detect hidden skill. When you are in a house that you own or have friend/co-owner/guild member status with, it will detect and reveal any person hiding anywhere in the home. It works 100% every time, even with zero skill in detect hidden.

Make sure you target the floor of your home though! Sometimes if you target a chair, carpet, or some other item, it will not work. You'll know the search was successful when you receive a message that tells you if someone was found or the house is empty.

Braziers and certain forms of broken chairs will say "already locked down" when you try to lock them down. Do not trust this. Whenever you try to lock down an item, and it says already locked down even though it's not, basically means it's not lockable and you should store it in a secure container instead till it's addressed by the dev team.