Is this type of key common in the US?
A few years back I bought a lockpicking set, and locks like these are incredibly easy to open without much training.
In Switzerland we have KABA locks pretty much everywhere. I don't know but I think they're much harder to pick and I guess you can't reconstruct them out of a photo because you don't know the depth of the holes.
Also you need the key and lock the door from the outside with it, so you can't really lock yourself out. Doors that snap lock are incredibly rare here.
The US is an odd place for locks. Locks here pander mostly to convenience and cost, not security. So high security keys like those are rare here.
One reason is the way we build houses. It's easy to break into our houses through their windows or from their back door, so it makes little sense to secure their front doors with fancy locks. Instead, we rely on alarms, guard dogs, our neighbors, or guns. Compare our exposed apartments here to those in, say, Paris, which have barred windows, or to houses in the middle east, which are walled off from the street.
Here is some sales data from KeysDuplicated.com that you might find interesting (we're in the same business as keyme, though we mostly operate in the background, as a service provider to other businesses): about 45% of our US orders are standard Schlage keys, which are relatively easy to pick. About 25% of our US orders are Kwikset keys, which are absolutely trivial to pick. About 90% of the requests we receive from the Middle East are mind-bogglingly complex and would take hours to pick. Our French orders are somewhere in the middle.
Anyway, to answer a question that might have been lurking in your comment: those dimple keys aren't any more difficult to duplicate by photo than other keys. The image analysis is similar, and cutting them on our machines is straightforward. They're just hard to pick. And in case you were going to ask, we don't copy them at KeysDuplicated because that usually goes against the intent of the owner of the key.
I worked as an apprentice locksmith from the middle of high school until I graduated college - we always told people, standard locks should be looked at only as a way to inconvenience a person from breaking in. If someone really wants to break into your house, they are going to; it's only a matter of how long it takes them to get in, and through what method. Granted, it was at this point they would ask about security systems, which we also installed - but the general principal still stands.
>If someone really wants to break into your house, they are going to
That's the basic principle of security. Be it crypto, physical security or anything else.
You're always just buying time. So the question is how much time do you want to buy.
If you can kick down the door in 2 seconds you just have a very low security margin. Compare this with crypto where you measure security margins in years.
I'm just a bit baffled that it's that low for apartments in the US.
You probably couldn't kick down most doors here. Well at least I couldn't.
Obviously, lock safety tend to go hand in hand with other forms of safety. My experience is that houses and apartments in the US seem relatively easy to break into. Here in Stockholm (Sweden), I've never ever seen an apartment door that opens inwards (and most are steel enforced), and street-facing bottom floor windows have steel bars usually.
Yes, at the very least in Apartments in the US. Every apartment I've lived in (in several states/both coasts) has had the simple style keys. IANAL (i am not a locksmith), however.
Homeowners obviously have more choice in the locks they use, though.
KABA is really uncommon for residential units in the US. But you probably could optically measure the key, since the dimple's diameter shows the depth.
It's always seemed like a safety hazard to me with interior-locking doors. When I stayed with a friend in Paris, I was locked inside their flat when they left early for work.
Yes, everywhere I've ever lived or visited in the US. And very few hardware stores stock anything but those basic types of locks. Even the somewhat more secure Medco locks are virtually never seen, and cost several times more to buy.
I would say they're right to use relatively simple locks too. I've known several people who have had their homes broken into through kicking down doors or breaking windows. I've never even heard of a break-in by picking a lock. Why make everybody's locks much more expensive and harder to duplicate when lockpicking attacks are virtually nonexistent in the real world?
Is this type of key common in the US? A few years back I bought a lockpicking set, and locks like these are incredibly easy to open without much training.
In Switzerland we have KABA locks pretty much everywhere. I don't know but I think they're much harder to pick and I guess you can't reconstruct them out of a photo because you don't know the depth of the holes.
Also you need the key and lock the door from the outside with it, so you can't really lock yourself out. Doors that snap lock are incredibly rare here.
Photo: http://www.kaba.ch/media/466464/v6/resized535x-1/dunkelrot-f...