Did you know that criminals might be able to twist the lock right off your door in near silence, and then open your door with a screwdriver?  The way to guard against this is to use a cylinder lock guard.  This makes it hard for the criminal to get a grip on your lock cylinder because it spins around freely.

A few years ago, this problem came up on Capitol Hill.  A group of thieves were going around twisting the locks off of business’s doors with a very large wrench.  At the time, people became very concerned about the problem and cylinder guards were very popular to install, but now when I go to a lot of businesses I see that their lock cylinders are not protected at all.

When you consider how much is at stake (a store’s entire inventory, a family’s belongings of great sentimental and market value) and identify that the lock is the single point of failure that makes it possible to lose these things, you realise how inexpensive it actually is to pay for the installation of a cylinder guard.  If you have the time, you can even do this yourself.

First, you have to buy a cylinder guard.  Second, you have to loosen (but not remove) the set screw for your lock cylinder.  Third, you must unscrew your lock cylinder so that it comes out of the mortise cassette, put the cylinder guard on it so that the lock cylinder  is recessed, and screw it back in carefully so that the threads line up correctly.  If you do it correctly and screw it in far enough, you can tighten the set screw and try out your mortise cylinder to see if it still works correctly.

The cylinder guard may be thick enough that it causes your lock cylinder’s cam to not contact the mortise cassette correctly, and this means you need a slightly longer lock cylinder or you need to screw your lock cylinder in farther.

If this sounds difficult, I charge $65 for a service call and about $10 for a cylinder guard, depending on finish.  If you have any locks to rekey, $10 more is a very small price to pay for peace of mind.  Bearing these things in mind, give me a call and make your house or business a harder target!

The last week I have been called out to numerous people’s houses to fix a problem caused by a contractor who most likely was in a big rush and didn’t finish the job. The primary problem is that they didn’t tighten screws enough. One family recently hired a contractor to install some Baldwin locks on their front door, and they couldn’t get the key out of the front door. This turned out to be because the contractor didn’t screw the mortise cylinder’s retainer screw in all the way, and also didn’t tighten some other screws.
Before you call a locksmith out, check to see if any screws are not finger tight. If they are loose to the finger, try orienting the lock correctly, straight up and down. Then try tightening the screws that are visible. It might save you $65.

Today this lady was asking me about her file cabinet, and how to make it lock. She had no key. I said, “No problem!” It was actually my first time impressioning a key in the field, and my only blank was nickel, but it still didn’t take too long. Just ten minutes of filing. It actually took longer to fix the file cabinet’s stupid locking mechanism that attaches to the cam of the cabinet lock.
Anyway the point is, for a small fee you can get your file cabinet working. Of course, you could also go to Goodwill and buy a file cabinet that probably has keys for $5. If you don’t want to deal with the hassle though, give me a call and I will make your file cabinet locking. (Not that the security on file cabinets is terribly good)

The new Google Maps isn’t as useful.  I am sure of it now because I recently got an old Droid, an HTC EVO, with the old Google Maps.  It was awesome because you could see little dots in the map view which corresponded to places where you had to perform an action such as turn left or right or continue straight.  You could click on any individual white dot and a little popup would tell you, “turn right on x street” or get off at exit 295 or something.

Contrast that with the new version of Google Maps that the HTC EVO helpfully updated itself to:

Now, when you want to see directions, you have to pull up a list of directions.  This takes your eyes off the map.  The only option that combines turning directions and a map is the realtime Google Navigator or navigation, which is a battery hog and downloads lots of data.  I work mobile, and I depend on Google Maps.  Perhaps a little too much.  I also depend on a second tier mobile provider that is really inexpensive but also good, but this is contingent on me staying below 1 GB per month.

Months after deleting me and listening to me carp about it on their forums, and then making a new google login to make another business listing, and then calling Google multiple times to ask about it, they finally added my business back to Google Maps.  It isn’t correct because I selected the option of hiding my address (since I am mobile only) and they lost my reviews, but at least I am there again.  I got two calls today from Iphone users and usually I don’t get any calls so it is possible that this has affected my search results on iphones.  Now we will see if those knuckleheads can remove all of the spam around me!

You are worried about somebody breaking into your property?  Remember that criminals take the path of least resistance.  They won’t be picking the locks on your front door unless they have something serious to gain from it.  They would rather crawl in your window.

One of the best ways to prevent this is to make your property look more difficult and less interesting than neighbors.  Motion detector lights, signs advertising your investment in alarm systems, little blinking led lights indicating alarms, thick door frames, imposing looking locks, and of course solid doors are all part of presenting a difficult-to-break-into property.

In addition, it is wise to keep really expensive looking objects out of public view.   Just as we don’t leave purses in our cars, it is unwise to leave expensive electronics such as laptops near windows.  Windows are inexpensively secured by the addition of small clamps to inhibit their opening past a certain point.  You can also put a grill on them to avoid people crawling through them.

I like plants more than the next guy.  My living space is full of plants.  I wouldn’t keep plants outside near my windows, however.  When planning your landscaping, keep any possible shelter or shadow from near your house for criminals to hide in.  This makes it more difficult for them to work on opening some entryway surreptitiously.  This is one place where privacy fences can work against you.  All a criminal has to do is jump your fence without being seen and if your fence is opaque, he can take hours to open your door or window quietly.

Security hardware is built with the best intentions, but the reality is that you can only hope for it to slow criminals down.  The locks I put on my motorcycle are measured by their effectiveness in criminal deterrence, but also how much longer it takes a thief to steal it with the locks on it.  I have an eye bolt drilled into the ground in my parking spot so that I can lock my bike to the ground, which avoids people just picking it up.  It is 800 Ibs, but that can be accomplished with three men who are drunk strong.  Additionally, the cable is very long to avoid them twisting the cable to break it.  They would spend a very long time twisting my cable.  It is also very thick so it would take them at least a few more minutes with a boltcutter to cut through the cable.  Then they would have to deal with the disc lock, which would require an angle grinder or something unless they just unscrewed the wheel and then took off the disc brake.

Anyway the point is, think about your security in terms of all points of entry, and make sure that your house or car is more difficult looking to break into than your neighbor’s.  But not so much more difficult that it appears you have a fortune hidden inside.

So, you are here because there is only one reasonable entrance to your dwelling without considering rappelling out of your back window.  Your doorknob or deadbolt won’t disengage, despite every method you can think of to unlock them.

Whichever oneit is, your latch is probably at fault.  Today I had a latch malfunction, and it was a big problem.  I had to disassemble the whole knob to get to the latch and force it open.  This was an extreme case.

Four days ago, I responded to a call for some women who were locked inside.  They could have exited by using a coat hanger to pull their latch back.   Of course, if your door is installed well you can’t fit anything in between the door and the door jam to manipulate the latch.  You have to cross your fingers and hire a well-trained professional to install your locks and hope that all is well.  Some precautions to keep in mind follow anyway:

Make sure if your lock starts malfunctioning to mess around with it while the door is open.  If there is a problem, you want it to occur while you can still easily access both sides of the door.  If the lock completely fails, better that it fails while the door is open so that you can still exit freely.  The ladies I responded to thought that closing the door would fix the problem.  Boy were they wrong!  I could have had them out in fifteen minutes, but there was an AIDS awareness march going down the street near their condo so it took me an extra twenty minutes!  I am not sure if they are now more aware of AIDS or not, but they certainly know not to shut the door if their lock is not functioning as expected!

The key to trying to get out when your lock is malfunctioning is to try to either manipulate the latch, or take the lock off the door, at which point you must also manipulate the latch.  The latch is what keeps the door closed and moves from inside the door to the door jam.  The lock only serves to move the latch back and forth.

Sometimes the lock manufacturer has funny ways of obscuring the bolts that hold the lock on.  You may have to remove the interior knob via a spring loaded mechanism in the side of the knob, or a rose on the door.  As the little Liebowski says, there are a lot of ins and a lot of outs.  You just have to work at it.  If you are like me, you have taken every single thing in your house apart already so you know how it is disassembled in times of need.  Otherwise, you can spend the time figuring it out with wire, credit card or screw driver, rappel out the window, or call me.  Good luck!

So, the years have passed and your key works but only if you jiggle it or if you pull it out a little bit?  Chances are that your key and/or the pins in the lock have worn down.  You can remedy this situation very easily and inexpensively by having your key copied but shimming the original key with a folded piece of paper to raise up the heights and counteract the forces of abrasion over the years.  This will compensate for lost material on your key as well as the pins in the lock.  This should only cost you $3 or less, if you have a common key blank.

My experience with bluetooth has been pretty successful over the course of the last few years.  I have a mouse that works wirelessly through this tech, my car stereo connects to my phone and plays music using it, etc.  I also have an RC helicopter which is supposed to work through bluetooth and let my phone control it but it doesn’t work at all.  The helicopter seems not to receive commands all the time, and a pilotless helicopter doesn’t stay airborne long.

This brings us to the newest bluetooth device of interest: The Kevo bluetooth deadbolt made in coordination with Kwikset.  It looks like a really fantastic device and knowing my high-tech clientelle I immediately started working to find out if any of my distributors were selling it, because I know there will be demand by tech savvy people who want to use hands-free locks.

Carrying this lock and recommending it, however, are two different things.  I rarely take a chance on new technology because there is always a lot of bugs to iron out, especially in the last twenty years.  I have a lot of experience with open source software and the trend lately seems to be to push the product out the door working or not and then roll out fixes later.  Product manufacturers seem to think it is fine to use their customers as beta testers!  And so what if the device malfunctions or gets bricked in the course of this testing?  The stipulations of the warranty are that the customer has to pay for shipping, and half the time that alone is half the cost of a new device!

With my bluetooth-enabled RC helicopter experience in mind, I suggest to my customers that they hold off on buying any bluetooth enabled locks.  There are lots of things people haven’t thought through here, like how hard is it to clone a phone’s bluetooth profile and spoof somebody’s phone?  If somebody made a device that could read the handshake between the phone and the lock, they could probably spoof the device and do that themselves when the owner left his home next.

Second question: if you are in your house with your bluetooth phone, can somebody else walk up and touch the deadbolt and it will open, because the bluetooth device is nearby?  That would be worrisome if you were asleep and your phone was in range of your lock.

Finally, this lock is $200 but at its heart there is still an insecure kwikset deadbolt with smartkey tech, and this has been shown to be vulnerable to numerous attacks involving brute force which leave no sign of entry.  Adding bluetooth to this lock is sort of akin to polishing a turd, if you get my drift.

So, if you are interested in hands free technology, there are other options like Zwave technology as well as the Arrow touchpad, and also voice recognition technology.  Just don’t get a Kwikset Kevo until the tech has been around one generation.  Especially with real world hardware that can lock you out if it malfunctions!  I like to sit back for six months and watch all of the early adopters break their new toys and find fixes before I embark on the upgrade process.  This is how I’ve been doing it with my android phone, my mp3 player, my linux computer, my routers, etc for years and years.

Today Wired ran an article about Kwikset Smartkey locks and how easily they are compromised. They use nearly the same technique that I use when people are locked out of a Smartkey lock, except that I torque an actual key. They hammer a key blank into the lock so they can’t take it back out. My method, I take the key back out after I am done, and the regular key still works half the time.
The main premise of their argument, however, is correct: Smartkey locks are not that smart. They won’t keep criminals out. Their main use is for low security rental units that landlords want to rekey after each change in occupancy. I know my key looked very worn when I got it from my property manager.
So, in an analysis of what these guys did wrong: They should have tried torquing a nickel key so that they could remove it. This would have two beneficial results: they wouldn’t have damaged the lock face with their screwdriver, and there would not be a key still inside the keyway. There would be absolutely no sign of forced entry. The lock would probably still work. I feel like an idiot for not pulling their grant money for this study, because I could have done this a lot better. On the other hand, maybe they purposely obfuscated the methods I describe because they don’t want to give criminals the ability of forced entry with no forensic signs.
At any rate, the old adage remains true: if the criminal wants into your house, they will get in. The trick is making it look harder to get into your house than your neighbor’s (but not so hard as to attract interest). Kwikset advertises this deadbolt as grade 1, meaning that it can be used thousands of times without failure. I have lots of customers whose smartkey locks have failed after a few years. They seem more likely to fail if poorly copied keys are used in them.
Another thing this video points out is the need for a keyway that is less common or restricted entirely. This method wouldn’t work if these men weren’t able to stick a blank that fit the keyway into the lock. I always offer customers the choice of changing the keyway to a less common one or a restricted keyway for a little bit more money. Then you are far safer from bumpkey attacks, not to mention how much harder picking a lock is if it is not kw1 or wr3. There is a lot of room for manoeuvrability in these latter keyways.