My wife and I moved this weekend and one of the first things I wanted to do was change the locks. So we went to Home Depot to check them out. We decided to get the locks to the right (I know it's a bad picture but they're Masterlock's "Smart Key Locks"). We chose that particular lock because it can be reset by the user, no locksmith required. Sounds great right? Well, not so much - at least not if you want to actually secure your home.
I was thinking that you'd program the new lock internally, meaning the lock would have to be removed from the door and taken apart. Wrong. At the top of the directions, in bold lettering is "Install lock in door before training lock to key." At this point I assumed that the retraining must be done from the inner knob. Again, wrong.
No, to retrain this brilliance in engineering, you insert the key you'd like to work in the lock, then insert a little "smart key". This "smart key" is nothing more than a bent piece of sheet metal that slides alongside the new key. Voila! The lock is now retrained to whatever key you have and will now open the lock. Basically all a half intelligent thief has to do is spend $30 on one of these Smart Locks, take the "smart key" out and have a go!
Brilliant!
Addendum: So I was wrong - turns out the lock has to be unlocked first to re-train it. I'm still not entirely sure I'd feel safe with it though...
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Purloiner PSA
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3 comments:
If we apply Microsoft logic to this post, you're not warning people not to buy the lock or secure their homes better, but helping thieves break into homes and are therefore a criminal... shame on you.
You laugh, but I was half expecting some lurker/spammer to accuse me of that...
I'm not laughing... I just think how they've manipulated the legal system, especially in a country with "free speech", is re-fing-diculous.
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