Some alarm systems are wireless instead of wired. That means that somebody can listen into radio signals and spoof commands to the security system. Lots of systems from big companies like ADT employ wireless signals, and somebody can disarm these systems remotely with some high tech tricks.
Of course, it is also possible that somebody could disarm your system if it is wired too if they bothered to splice into the wire, but that is harder and then they would have to creep around your property. I submit that it is better to have a wired security system for this reason.
So you put a nice thick deadbolt on your door and you think your house is secure. Did you consider whether or not the hinges are on the outside of one of your doors? If they are, somebody could knock the hinge bolts out of your door and pull the entire door out of the frame, negating the entire installation of your lock!
If you want to keep this from happening, you have a lot of choices ranging from replacing the door so that the hinges are on the inside of the house to changing the hinges so that the bolt can only be removed when the door is open. A cheap fix is to replace the hinges on your door with a type that does not have removable hinge pins. The least expensive fix requires only one or two wood screws and a drill bit the same size as the screw’s head.
If you put a screw into the hinge side of a door so that when the door is closed the screw goes into the door frame, even without the hinge bolts on the door cannot be removed. The screw connects the door to the frame when the door is shut, like a miniature deadbolt.
To install the screw, either select a screw of a smaller diameter than the holes in your hinges and put them in the center holes of your hinges so that they stick out 3/8″ and go in the hinge holes on the other side of the hinge, or: drill a pilot hole halfway down the door but a little higher than the hinge. Install the screw so that about half an inch of the screw sticks out of the door. Carefully close the door until the screw’s head touches the door frame, and mark that spot with something. Drill another hole there, but with a different drill bit which is of slightly greater thickness than the head of the screw you put in your door. That is so when you shut the door the screw goes into the hole you made. Then if somebody takes the bolts out of your hinges and pulls on the door the screw will keep the door attached firmly to the frame, and all with twenty minutes and less than a dollar’s worth of materials.
Update: I edited this page to remove specific brand names because the CEO of one of the manufacturers mentioned as being cheap called me and informed me that his locks are in fact manufactured in the USA and that his company’s lock probably broke because it was installed wrong. I have reservations about why his lock broke but am giving him the benefit of a doubt.
Lots of my customers balk at the cost of a commercial leverset because they see doorknobs at the hardware store for under $50. The least expensive commercial passage leverset I feel comfortable guaranteeing is $82 retail. My Marks Survival Series leversets retail for over $500 (though I don’t think anyone actually pays that much in practice). Some leversets I don’t want to deal with can be had for much less, and the reason I don’t sell them is that they have a tendency to fail. If people don’t notice that the lock has failed and shut the door, they will either be locked out or even worse locked in as was the case for my unfortunate client today.
The reason they got locked in their office was because the builder installed leversets that were bottom dollar and one of them failed. Import Chinese locks have a tendency to fail prematurely and for no good reason. The leverset failed because it is made of cheap metal that snapped at the junction between the lockset and the latch, a part called a retractor. Usually the latch fails in cheap locks, but this lock is cheaper than usual apparently.
If a lock isn’t installed properly even a well-constructed lock will probably fail over time, so make sure to read the installation instructions or hire somebody who knows what they are doing.
So take advantage of the lesson these poor folks learned the hard way: get reasonable hardware in the first place or you may end up paying me to come out and open your door and then replace it with a decent lock you should have had on the door in the first place. A good way to find a decent lock is to see if the lock advertises a guarantee.
On the top is a good lock. On the bottom is a poorly made lock where the part that grabs the latch has snapped on both sides (circled).
Somebody wrote “Do Not Duplicate” on this key but somebody could just rub this off. Probably nobody would heed this key’s admonition anyway. If you want a Do not Duplicate key, pay fifty cents more and get an actual one with a neuter head or a restricted keyway that can’t legally be duplicated.
So you have a key that says Do Not Duplicate on it? The reason is whoever owns the property that key works at doesn’t want you to duplicate that key. In fact, they probably paid a dollar extra for the key to say this on it. If you have a good reason to duplicate that key, you should ask whoever originally gave it to you for another copy. The property manager wants to control who has this key and how many they have, and it may be for your own safety and that of others who use that building. You wouldn’t want somebody in your building to make fifty copies for his or her friends so they can use the community pool or laundromat and have all kinds of random people wandering through your building. Maybe friends of friends would also make key copies and soon your building would be overrun by random people doing who knows what.
If that person then tells you to “just take it to X locksmith, they will copy it for you, just tell them I sent you”, they are deluded. Most locksmiths won’t just copy a key that says Do Not Duplicate, because then nobody would pay an extra dollar for keys that say this on it. The whole thing would be a joke, and it doesn’t make good business sense. The DND message is not legally binding. I can legally copy these keys for anybody. I still won’t do it without proper authorization, and neither will most other locksmiths. I will only copy your DND key if you bring a letter on company letterhead explicitly stating your name and how many copies you are allowed to make. The letter must have a phone number and the person on the other end must pick up the phone and confirm who they are before I will copy the key.
I noticed while reading other locksmiths’ Yelp reviews (I have to find out how high the bar is placed!) that a locksmith in University Village apparently will copy Do Not Duplicate Keys (for a price). Multiple reviewers note that they are the only locksmith that will copy these keys. This is why property owners who really care about key control are advised to invest in controlled keyways. There will always be somebody who will copy keys, everything has a price. I have keys that people cannot take to a kiosk in a parking lot and duplicate, because he does not have access to those keys. Even if somebody offered him $200 for a key copy, he would not be able to duplicate it unless he has some sort of exotic milling machine in his kiosk and the time to replicate a blank.
The other reason to avoid using common keyways are outlined by these suggestions to circumvent the Do Not Duplicate message on a key. The good people at Metafilter suggest that putting tape over these keys will thwart the guy at the hardware store. Alternatively, a ne-er-do-well trying to circumvent this could simply cut the head of the key off and ask that it be duplicated. I copy broken keys frequently, and it isn’t hard to do. Somebody could also measure the depths of the cuts on their key that isn’t supposed to be duplicated and call a locksmith and ask them to code cut it to those depths. Locksmiths usually know how to cut keys to specific depths, if they don’t they aren’t “worth their salt”.
Patio doors are sometimes the easiest entry point for criminals. People leave them slightly open and think because it is not on the ground floor it is out of reach of criminals or putting a dowel in the track will deter criminals from entry. Unfortunately I have news for you: craftier criminals know how to get the dowel out of the way, and they can procure ladders. I was surprised to learn that Seattle’s own police department is recommending people put dowels in their patio door tracks to keep criminals from prying doors open. Of course this solution offers more security than not having a dowel, but I would hope that the police suggest that those who are concerned get a Charlie Bar or a patio lock with a spring-loaded bolt because it is a much better solution to the problem.
There are many ways to get in through a patio door for the criminal. Don’t worry, I am not divulging anything to criminals that they haven’t learned about in “Con College” here:
The round perforation can be knocked out, giving access to the lock mechanism.
1. They can knock out the perforation in your patio door handle and unlock the door with a screwdriver. If there is a perforated round bit of metal in the center of your sliding patio door, that is to put a lock cylinder in. If you or somebody else knocks that perforation out of the patio door, the lock becomes accessible and anybody can then unlock the door with a flathead screwdriver. To prevent this, consider getting a patio door handle without a perforation or get a lock cylinder to put in the hole that results when the perforation is knocked out. This cylinder can be keyed to match your front door and they are available in a wide number of keyways. For whatever reason these are not standard key-in-knob cylinders. They are often cheap and of non-standard dimensions. My search continues for high quality patio door cylinders of the correct form factor, but until then we must make due with these which solve a big vulnerability.
2. If the homeowner wants to keep their sliding patio door slightly open for ventilation, they will often employ a dowel to keep somebody from opening the door further than a few inches. This is a bad idea. The reason it is a bad idea is that the criminal can stick a coat hanger or other thin device between the two sliding glass panels and flip the dowel out of the way. Now the door slides all the way open. I did this once when somebody’s deadbolt malfunctioned, locking them out, and the patio door was the only other door into the condo. It worked like a charm. Worse yet, there is no sign of forced entry and your insurance company may drag its feet paying out if you have insurance for burglary. I found out that criminals actually figured out this technique for themselves. To prevent this happening, you should consider installing a patio lock or calling me to install a patio door lock.
These patio locks are great because you can drill holes for every width you want the door to be open at, and a spring-loaded bolt attached to the sliding door will drop into these holes when you allow it to. If correctly installed our burglar will not be able to pry his way in unless he uses some really big tools and not without making some noise, so you can safely leave these doors slightly open.
3. The other method criminals use to get through a patio door is by trying to get them to fall off their tracks and pushing them out of the way. This happens when the installer does a sloppy job and doesn’t make sure the door is framed in tightly. The best way to prevent this happening is also an easy and cheap fix: you run some screws in the track so that the heads of the screws sit just above the sliding door. Three or four screws spaced evenly ensure that there is no way to lift the sliding glass door out of its track. If your sliding door is really flexible and thin or maybe not installed properly, you need to get that fixed by a professional door installer (not me).
Much of the same information here is applicable to windows. Windows are usually smaller than doors so they flex less. It may therefore be okay to use a dowel in some windows. That said, there are some very cheap ways to make sure that somebody can’t open your window past a certain point without a great deal of force. I like that first link and have it on my own window. For a few dollars, I can leave my window open and know that unless somebody has a bottle jack or something they aren’t going to open the window. You can drill holes in the frame for the wingnuts to go into to make it a little harder for somebody with a jack to open your window. If somebody is willing to go to such lengths to break in to your house you must have something very valuable and it may be worth your while to invest in some bars, a security system, etc. You will probably have the money to do so if thieves are using more sophisticated methods to get into your house like glasscutters or whatever other techniques might carry over from the movies into real life crime scenarios.
If you have window sash locks you ought to consider secondary methods of locking your window, because a lot of the houses I work on have really old windows with wood that is deteriorating and the small wood screws that hold these window sash locks on are often barely grabbing onto anything. When I point this out, some people propose simply screwing the window shut. That’s fine, it will secure the window, but it is a real shame not to get a breeze. I know my plants enjoy a little breeze in the height of summer.
All of the locks I have linked to except the spring-loaded patio lock bolts and the Charlie Bar are under $4 retail and most of them install with just a Phillips screwdriver. Some install with no tools but opposable digits! There is no excuse for not ordering a few of them and improving your security because the budget for doing so is less than an hour and under $20. The sliding door is perhaps the most vulnerable entry point to your home, but it is also one of the easiest and cheapest doors to secure. The more expensive spring-loaded bolts are only about $30 retail themselves and well worth the cost if you have a patio door. So do it yourself or call me, but for goodness’ sake install a sliding door lock!
There are two good reasons to replace your door closer if you suspect it is failing. The first and most important is security. If it fails it may not close all the way and the door may not latch and some unwanted person may enter the premises the lock on the door is meant to keep out. The second reason is that hydraulic fluid in the door closer may leak out onto the door and floor and leave a terrible stain that is impossible to get out. It also smells really badly.
The door closer’s purpose is first to close the door, and second to regulate the speed with which the door closes. It ensures that unless somebody leaves an obstruction in the doorway, the door will close. It is then a nearly fool-proof method of securing a door when that door has a latching lock on it. If the door closer is not properly configured or a gasket fails and the hydraulic fluid leaks out, the door may not close with enough force for the lock’s latch to engage, allowing people to push the door open and enter without a key.
A new door closer to replace the old one.
Bottom line is if you notice that your door is closing faster or slower than usual or barely latching shut, or if there is a sticky oily brown mess leaking out of it, it may be time to replace it in which case you ought to give me a call. My charges are a service call of $65 to North Seattle in addition to:
Labor for Replacement: $45
Parts, depending on traffic and weight of door: $120-350
Mag plates, or wrap around plates, are useful in numerous situations. Consider the unfortunate soul whose house has been broken into, or at least was attempted. The rapscallions may have used a crowbar or something to attempt to pry the door open or pry the lock off the door, leaving unsightly marks in the wood on the door and the door jamb. The marks on the door can be covered using a mag plate.
A wrap around plate covers up holes from an old lock and allows installation of a conventional tubular lock.
The mag plate covers up unsightly marks, but it also serves to reinforce the door. If we consider the door that was molested by neighborly urban youths, it may have lost some of its structural integrity during its trials. Structurally, the mag plate can reinforce the door in a retrofit situation as well.
Lots of old houses have what are called mortise locks, and they are generally really robust. They may last over 100 years with minimal upkeep and lubrication! Unfortunately, 100 years after they were installed it may be difficult to find parts for them, and they like other kinetic mechanical systems will eventually fail. The difficulty in procuring replacement parts means that it may well be less expensive to do a retrofit on the door than to fix the mortise lock. Mortise locks were constructed with few standards and the placement of various features on the lock will be different than other mortise locks.
Putting a mag plate over the holes left by the mortise lock not only covers up unsightly holes, but reinforces the structural integrity of the door. Without the mortise lock in the door there will be a large cavity, leaving perhaps 1/4 inch of wood on either side of the cavity. A swift punch or kick near this spot and the door will quickly yield a large enough hole that the perpetrator might be able to reach the deadbolt above the hole and unlock it. If there is a plate covering this spot, it will be nearly impossible for our perpetrator to force their way in.
Mag plates are pretty easy to install most of the time. You need only take the lock off the door with a Phillips screwdriver, put the mag plate over the door so the holes line up, and put the lock back on the same way you took it off. Make sure the door shuts because if the fit is tight you may need to get out your chisel and remove some wood from underneath the mag plate. You may consider calling me at this point if you are inexperienced with a chisel. If the door does close and the lock appears to be working properly, good job! You can tighten everything up, put the four screws on the mag plate, and reflect on a job well done.
Pitfalls that may occur: Make sure you get the correct size of mag plate. This requires measuring the thickness of the door, and measuring how far from the edge of the door the center of the lock is. Also decide what color you want the mag plate to be. When you go to the store, whether on the internet or in the real world, it may help if you have a picture of the door with you. Consider getting a mag plate the same color as the lock it will go under.
Secondly, make sure the mag plate is on the door tight. If it doesn’t line up with the holes perfectly when it is on tight, you may need to redrill the holes.
Third, when you install it if you are also drilling the holes, measure twice. Make sure the plate is in the correct spot and covering up everything you need it to before you drill giant holes in your door.
If you own or manage a property that you must let people use, you are probably familiar with the idea of key control. You must give people keys that they can use but perhaps that they hopefully cannot duplicate. Ideally perhaps these people can only go into the property at certain times.
Some people in your situation as a property manager think it is suitable to simply have the locksmith who copies their keys stamp “Do Not Duplicate” on the head of the key for free, so as to save $.75 per key. I assure you, that is not sufficient. All the key holder needs to do is cover the stamped portion of the key head with any of a myriad of different colorful key identifiers. Then anybody will copy the key, or it can be copied in a key kiosk.
Similarly to the last problem, one can also distribute keys with neuter heads that say Do Not Duplicate in large letters. Even if those letters are ground off, the shape of the head tips off our locksmith that the key is not meant to be copied. This is a suitable key for low security situations. It is only good enough for low security because if the head is broken off the key and the cut portion taken to any locksmith he will duplicate that key onto a regular key blank which can be copied anywhere.
The other problem with a key that says “Do Not Duplicate” somewhere on it is that the cuts of the key can be easily measured using common calipers and then the original code cuts can be determined in minutes. Once this is done, any locksmith in the land will cut the key with the depths told to him over the phone.
The solution to controlling who has keys and preventing them from copying those keys is to use restricted keyways. When one locksmith controls your keyway and is legally bound to audit those he sells the keys to, you have a much better guarantee of security. The only way to copy a mechanical key with a restricted keyway is to spend a lot of time with a 3d copier or a milling machine and lots of time measuring. The bar is set much higher for obtaining unauthorized access to the properties you manage.
Of course, if one person is the salesman of your restricted keyway that is unobtainable anywhere else, you may expect the cost of the key to be a great deal more than a regular key. That is generally the case. Many locksmiths charge $10-20 for a high security restricted key. Of course, these keys also have higher costs for the locksmith who passes these costs on to you.
If you are interested in getting high security restricted keys I am a dealer of the CX-5 restricted keyway lock cylinders, and I can supply you with keys at the bargain basement price of $5 each. That is a screaming deal for a restricted key to a high security cylinder with a sidebar. If you do the math, it would probably cost less to replace the Medeco cylinders and keys in your building with my CX-5 cylinders and keys than it would be to rekey the Medeco cylinders and buy all new keys. Each person you need to get a key for represents at least $7 savings in typical situations if you make the switch. Bottom line is that you will save a lot of money if you go with Maple Leaf Locksmith LLC.
I like to read technology news and sometimes this news intersects with my work as a locksmith. Today I was reading about research (after reading it appears to only be speculation though) being done by men examining how secure or insecure automobiles’ internal data communications networks are. This may be shocking to some, but your car has a computer in it communicating with different parts of the car. The concern here is that somebody could be driving next to you on the freeway, dislike the bumpersticker on your car, and turn your car off using some app on his phone that exploits a bluetooth security hole in your car’s computer. The researchers go so far as to list which vehicles they think are the least and most secure. In the comments was a very interesting observation:
I work in the automotive after market (ECU tuning). I can actually back up what they’re saying. Even if they did come by it via speculation, they’re actually pretty much dead on.
That is primarily because the german cars use what we call a “Can Gateway” but is better of though as a firewall. Every different system in the car has it’s own private canbus. Anything that needs to travel between the busses has to go through the gateway. In the case of VW/Audi vehicles, it’s locked down quite well. It knows what packets belong on what bus and only allows a very limited subset of properly formatted and required packets to pass between those busses.
Vehicles that share common can without a gateway are readily exploitable. I could plug a can interface into the headlights, A/C or any other system on the global bus and lock/unlock the doors, roll the windows up/down, trigger the traction control/ABS or even start/stop the car (if it uses a push button start).
Doing those things requires access to the can wires, but the bus is used for so much now-a-days, there’s always plenty of places to access it. Many of them without requiring keys or an open hood.
So what this guy is saying is that somebody with a thorough understanding of a modern car could walk up and take the tail light out, plug his laptop in, and unlock the doors and start the car! Even somebody without any understanding of these cars but access to the tools and instruction could do so; I can see a gang of car thieves with a really intelligent criminal mastermind running it giving his thieves tools and explicit instructions in a flip book format on how to steal expensive cars for him. Maybe that’s what this was all about?
All of these inroads made by computers in our lives seem to be generally for the better, making our lives easier, but there can be unforeseen consequences. That is why I remain leery of installing locks that can be accessed via the customer’s data network. I have read too many times of people bypassing firewalls or passwords and gaining access to people’s physical assets like their baby monitor, for example.
So you have an entry knob and you want to disable it for some reason? Maybe you keep locking yourself out or maybe you don’t want to pay a locksmith to rekey the knob since there is a perfectly good deadbolt just above it. This is the situation I found myself in today. My customer wanted to know if I could turn the Schlage knobs she had into passage knobs instead of buying new passage locks and also instead of rekeying the knobs to match the deadbolts. She didn’t want to keep paying $38 extra every time I came to rekey her rental house, and she didn’t want to buy new passage locksets.
The solution to this is simple, for the type of lock that has a spindle going through the knob to a bit on the inside of the door where the knob can be locked by turning something. This includes most cheaper knobs that can be purchased and installed oneself at the hardware store. All one need do is cut the thin piece of metal off that turns back and forth inside the knob. You can see in the picture above where the cut must be made. Make sure the metal spindle is in the unlocked position before cutting it off because it will be pretty hard to turn after you cut it off. If you don’t have a key that operates it you will have to pick the lock.
Once you put the knob back on the door you will notice that the inside locking mechanism on the knob will spin freely. It will be impossible for someone to lock the door without the key. Of course, you could just buy a passage knob at the hardware store for fifteen dollars or so and save your locking knob for replacement parts or sell it to somebody else on craigslist. Or donate it to my efforts to secure the homes of those in need.
I work in the automotive after market (ECU tuning). I can actually back up what they’re saying. Even if they did come by it via speculation, they’re actually pretty much dead on.
That is primarily because the german cars use what we call a “Can Gateway” but is better of though as a firewall. Every different system in the car has it’s own private canbus. Anything that needs to travel between the busses has to go through the gateway. In the case of VW/Audi vehicles, it’s locked down quite well. It knows what packets belong on what bus and only allows a very limited subset of properly formatted and required packets to pass between those busses.
Vehicles that share common can without a gateway are readily exploitable. I could plug a can interface into the headlights, A/C or any other system on the global bus and lock/unlock the doors, roll the windows up/down, trigger the traction control/ABS or even start/stop the car (if it uses a push button start).
Doing those things requires access to the can wires, but the bus is used for so much now-a-days, there’s always plenty of places to access it. Many of them without requiring keys or an open hood.