7 ms·

These look amazing! For anyone not aware: lock picking is already easy on most locks. I was locked out of a keyed door in my last apartment once and was able to

• phkahler 6y ago
  >> Since then I've thought of locks more like deterrent than bulletproof security. Remember, a rock to the window will get someone into your house. A bolt cutter will take off small padlocks. So yes, most locks are there to protect from the casual or opportunistic thief. That doesn't mean we don't need the of course.
  • tyleo 6y ago
    Indeed. I've also had to bolt cut my way into a storage unit I forgot the combination to. Bolt cutters could be rented from the local Home Depot and cut my way into my own storage unit with no knowledge from the staff. It was my lock so no damage to the owners.
  • EricE 6y ago
    >Remember, a rock to the window will get someone into your house. Security films that dramatically up the ante on what it takes to go through windows are getting cheap and easy to install. If I had thought about it when I got my windows tinted a few years back I would have just had them added on, especially for my downstairs windows (not sure I would bother with most of the upstairs - I have no trees or easy access to most of them). There are many simple things you can do to dramatically up the ante on what it takes for someone to molest your stuff. A recent news story talked about people using coat hangers to trip emergency garage door releases so a quick re-security it with a zip tie that will break with a solid tug for it's real use, but be too hard to break with a wire from outside is all that was needed to close that "hole". Need a place to share this kind of stuff for homeowners. I recon it would probably be a small percentage but still a large number.
  • bena 6y ago
    Yes, my wife was really insistent on our front door being locked while we were inside our apartment. I pointed out to her that our front door was nearly top to bottom glass panes and if someone with ill-intent wanted to gain entry, all they had to do was bust a pane and unlock the door themselves.
    • michael1999 6y ago
      Was she reassured?
      • bena 5y ago
        Does the exposure of security theater ever reassure anyone?
    • jjeaff 6y ago
      True, but if someone wants to get into a house and your neighbor's door is locked and yours isn't, which is the more likely to be entered?
      • bena 6y ago
        Neither. If you're looking to break into houses, you're not going door to door testing locks.
        • loriverkutya 6y ago
          The exact thing is happening in my neighbourhood on a regular basis in the last year. And in some cases the burglar managed to get away with notebooks and other valuables while the owner were just upstairs for 5 minutes.
          • bena 6y ago
            How did they know the owners were upstairs? I'm sorry, but your anecdote smells. If you are robbing houses at random, the last thing you want to do is rob an occupied home. You rob an occupied home for a reason specific to that house or the owner of that house. Most burglaries happen in the daytime when people are at work and their houses would be locked regardless. And the most common form of home theft nowadays is package theft. Which isn't going to be thwarted by locking your home since, you know, the package is just sitting on the porch.
• Swizec 6y ago
  > Since then I've thought of locks more like deterrent than bulletproof security. To be fair most american houses are built such that a reasonably burly person could punch through the wall. I’ve seen friends leave big holes in the wall just from falling down some stairs. Glass windows also are easy to get through. The problem with lock-picking is that it doesn’t leave signs of a break-in.
  • OminousWeapons 6y ago
    Yea at the end of the day it's all about what your threat model is. The strategies you use to defend against overt entry are not the same as the strategies you use to defend against covert entry (although there is overlap).
  • maxerickson 6y ago
    It would suck to punch through OSB, which is the wall sheathing in most modern US houses.
    • Scoundreller 6y ago
      OSB? That would be a very expensive fix.
    • jschwartzi 6y ago
      Use an axe or a chainsaw.
    • knute 6y ago
      There was a while in the 90s/00s when code only required wood sheathing on the corners, and elsewhere you could have just insulating foam sheathing. So if you had vinyl siding, someone could pretty easily break into your house with just box cutters.
  • Scoundreller 6y ago
    > The problem with lock-picking is that it doesn’t leave signs of a break-in. Sorta. Lock picking will leave marks/wear that no key would. So I recommend everyone try to pick their own lock today to make it look like someone picked it for up-to-no-good reasons.
• deleted 6y ago
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• jjbinx007 6y ago
  I was surprised to see just how easily this Master Lock key safes are to unlock with a bit of practice. However, when you consider it's not much more effort to pick the door lock anyway I don't suppose it matters much.
• dec0dedab0de 6y ago
  The old saying is that locks are for keeping the honest people out[1]. Over 10 years ago I was able to pick my garage door lock with a pen cap, a bobby pin, and a youtube video. Around the same time I realized how locks were important as I had friends and family walk into my house because I wasn't answering the door or my phone. [1] i tried to find who said it, but it looks like there are a ton of variations.
  • jart 6y ago
    I thought it was "keeping honest people honest".
• ineedasername 6y ago
  Yep, my first pick on a standard lock took fairly little time. If you're talking about something like a normal house door lock, even a beginner picker, with darkness as a cover, can get through without risking the sound generated by an entry through physical force. My view is that you choose lock cores based on how difficult you want it to be to pick before it makes more sense to resort to destructive entry. For a bike lock on the street, a few minutes of picking won't look much different to pedestrians than someone simply struggling with their own bike lock. But destructive removal is much more obvious. (Unless it's a physically flimsy lock, or even a beefy one with a simple bypass vulnerability)
  • vkou 6y ago
    > But destructive removal is much more obvious. It's much more obvious, but nobody is going to give two craps about you taking an angle grinder to someone else's bicycle lock. Bystanders don't want to get involved, and police don't pay any attention to bicycle theft.
    • ineedasername 6y ago
      That depends-- it's not a great idea to confront a thief, but I think there's at least a fraction of the population that would walk on for a bit & then call the police, and if there's a unit in the area it might at least take a drive-by. Or the thief might be unlucky and have a cop stumble on their effort. So, yes, destructive lock removal can still be fairly safe for the thief, but there is still a lot of increased risk if you employ a proper lock that would require an angle grinder, and most thieves probably don't bother to carry around tools like that and will simply move on to one of many ample opportunities for an easier target: A handheld compound bolt cutter will cut through inferior locks faster than opening with a key, so why bother bringing bulkier more obvious tools that increase risk even a little bit? It's not about whether your bike can be stolen: it almost certainly can. It's about making other targets more attractive.
      • sunshineforever 6y ago
        That's why I have an alarm that clips to the disk brakes. They're considered motorcycle alarms but work on anything with disk brakes. It also stops the back wheel from turning.
• ModernMech 6y ago
  Most people also forget that the security is vulnerable even before you get to the lock itself. One time I was at the beach with my in-laws and they locked themselves out of the beachouse rental. I just whipped out a credit card and slid it in the door jam. The door opened right up. Another time I misplaced the key to a storage unit in my apartment complex. I just took a small hacksaw and was through the thing in a couple minutes. The only thing it was protecting me from was people who didn't want to steam my stuff in the first place. Anyone with an ounce of determination would have been off with my stuff. And this doesn't even begin to touch on other vulnerabilities, like the hinges of doors being on the outside. Just take a screw driver and hammer and pop the pins out.