Something Strange Going On

[freakparade3]

Two weeks ago I bought a Schlage deadbolt to practice picking. Today my mother called and told me that her lock was not working right so I went to the same store and bought the same model of lock I had bought 2 weeks earlier to practice on. Installing it I noticed something strange. The key is EXACTLY the same as the one for my lock. I even went and got it. Both keys open both locks. Has anyone ever ran across this? The codes are stamped on the keys, both the same.

[pauly003]

I think that's actually fairly common if you buy your locks at a place like home depot. You probably wouldn't find that at a locksmiths. It's actually convienient foe people who are buying 2 locks that they want keyed the same. They just search through the bin untill they find 2 with the same code. It saves them the expense of calling a locksmith to key them the same.

[linty]

this is far too common, a lot of shops will do this to make their own lives easier. ordering large batches of the same keyed locks. in fact if you get non-rekeyable padlocks keyed alike you can almost be sure that the store sells the same ones to everybody who comes in.

i don't know of any locksmith shops that do this with regular locks but i've seen it with cam locks and padlocks.

[RodVT]

My local home supply often gets batches of four or six keyed alike for new home installs. They also ofen get broken up and sold to different customers, so it really isn't a big surprise to find to keyed the same on different days.....

[JackNco]

i have 2 Master no 3s.... well one is a cheap ripoff with a different body on it but same cylinder inside by the looks of things, out of the 5 variant i have 2 of the locks have interchangeable keys.

[digital_blue]

Yeah, not terribly surprising.

But then again... how much security can be expected from a lock with the key code stamped on it? I'm thinking that when you're buying locks at Home Depot, you're not really looking for high security. You're looking for cheap locks.

Schlage is marginally better than their Defiant brand (read: Kwikset). But only marginally, and the focus is not on security at a place like Home Depot.

Fortunately, unless you're followed home, or give your address out for some reason (I don't think HD takes addresses at the till), there's likely enough security through obscurity that you're ok.

db

[JackNco]

true enough. but one thing that springs to mind is that a checkout girl/boy could just write down the code and ur name when u walk off. only takes 30 seconds to get an address from a name from the interweb.

Then at the end of each week go shopping in your house.

just a thought.

[freakparade3]

Yeah, not terribly surprising.

But then again... how much security can be expected from a lock with the key code stamped on it? I'm thinking that when you're buying locks at Home Depot, you're not really looking for high security. You're looking for cheap locks.

Schlage is marginally better than their Defiant brand (read: Kwikset). But only marginally, and the focus is not on security at a place like Home Depot.

Fortunately, unless you're followed home, or give your address out for some reason (I don't think HD takes addresses at the till), there's likely enough security through obscurity that you're ok.

db

You were close, I got them at Lowe's. I'm not so much worried about the security, I just didn't know this was done.

[CVScam]

Before I learned how to pick locks I had a collection of keys, I had set of 15 kwickset keys that would open way too many locks. I was at Lowes the other day and they sell a knock off kwickset deadbolt called "Gatehouse" I looked and there were only 5-6 different key codes between all the ones on the shelf and in the big box under the shelf.

[jzorn1]

I have many rental properties and I usually try to get some properties with the same key cuts. That way I don't have to carry many keys

[morphje]

I have many rental properties and I usually try to get some properties with the same key cuts. That way I don't have to carry many keys

That's why they invented masterkey

[morphje]

I have many rental properties and I usually try to get some properties with the same key cuts. That way I don't have to carry many keys

That's why they invented masterkeying

[raimundo]

I was replacing a five pin schlage kik with a 6 pin cylinder, so I got an original key from my friend, and keyed the cylinder to it, later the guy I was doing this for, showed me that the 6 pin key was exactly the same as the five pin I was replacing with the exception of the last pin, I had some trouble convincing him that this was random and that the old keys would no longer work. I probably should have looked myself before he picked up on that.

[2octops]

I'm bad about not paying attention to the customers keys when I rekey a house. I just make up the new bitting in my head and code cut new keys and repin the locks.

A while back, I rekeyed a house with a random bitting. They called back the next day claiming their old keys worked the lock. I went back and checked and sure enough, their old keys were exactly the same bitting as what I came up with in my head.

There are only so many ways to combinate a cylinder. You can never guarantee that nobody else has a key that might fit with a standard cylinder.