One in a million

[Rickthepick]

I can see it being quite common with 3 and 5 lever locks as there arent as many combinations as you may think.

remember in a 5 lever double sided mortise lock, levers 3 and 5 are the same so it can be opperated from both sides. that narrows it down a bit straight away

[inverseentropy]

Here's another straight from the X-files: on a family vacation I punched a random code into a five-button keypad on the rental car and it opened. My friend opened a mechanical five-button door lock with one guess, and another friend opened another such door with two guesses. None of those cases involved obvious codes (it was not 1-2-3-4-5) and I don't know about my friends but at least in my case I was not in the habit of typing things into every single lock I came across.

Also, my brother's five-pin Schlage key opens my parent's door (with some jiggling I believe).

[yng_pick]

One time me and another guy were working on a 20 pushbar rekey on a clubhouse. We had pulled the cylinders, and I was running and installing the cylinders as he finished. Only after putting 13 back on did I try out the old key- with a slight wiggle while pulling back it would still work. Needless to say I always check or try the old key now.

I used to know a guy who would use the same set up bitting on the majority of his rekeys, as annoying as that is.

The guys I work with have a habit of trying factory presets in Simplex and similar locks. I've been to a bank to adjust a strike and found the 24 3 to work, and convinced them to have it changed. More disturbing is to find them still set at airports..

[jwhou]

Back in the 80's, my parent's garage door suddenly would be mysteriously open when we all knew it had been closed, so I drove around the block pushing the garage door remote and found that the remote now opened the door to the house behind us. Apparently the new owners changed the combination to lock out the previous owner. I changed my parents codes checking to see if any other doors in the neighborhood would open but kept one remote on the old code to frustrate the neighbour for a while.

More recently, when I re-keyed my house, I went looking for a pre-cut KW10 to re-key to. Finances were such that $150 for a locksmith to re-key was just not in the picture so I was doing it myself for $1.80 in pins and a new found interest in locks. I found those KW1 packs of precut keys that they sell for those new Kwikset smartkey locks and noticed that it looked familiar. Except for the fact that it was on a KW1 blank, it was cut for cut identical to my original KW10 house key. Of course a KW1 key wouldn't enter a KW10 keyway enough for a cut to cut identical bitting to work as it wouldn't reach the inner most pin and it would all be just off by one pin position but still that was quite a coincidence.

The Katrina Fema trailers were all keyed by one locksmith who used only 50 bittings for all of the trailers.

I think that although they say that there are 46,656 combinations of bittings in a Kwikset six pin lock and a million in a Schlage six pin, there's actually very few combinations in circulation and there's no mechanism in the production line to minimize the risk of identical bittings being in the same geographic area. They probably try to have multiple keyed alike locks on the shelves at home depot so that customers could rummage through the shelves and put together a keyed alike set. I'll bet that many locksmith's out there operate out of a box of mystery keys for the bitting changes rather than code cutting or code punching a new key up, thereby further magnifying the lack of diversity as it would be only manufacturer cut keys that are out there and the manufacturer doesn't really have an interest in ensuring a good distribution of codes.

I just wish the 1 in a million chance of a scratchoff lottery ticket would happen as frequently as the 1 in a million of a key working where it's not supposed to.

[raimundo]

when rekeying new locks or locks that have an original factory cut key, locksmiths collect the keys that are left over after the job is done, and these serve as new key bittings when another recombination job comes in. Its recycling.

[Oaklandishh]

Here's another straight from the X-files: on a family vacation I punched a random code into a five-button keypad on the rental car and it opened. My friend opened a mechanical five-button door lock with one guess, and another friend opened another such door with two guesses. None of those cases involved obvious codes (it was not 1-2-3-4-5) and I don't know about my friends but at least in my case I was not in the habit of typing things into every single lock I came across.

Also, my brother's five-pin Schlage key opens my parent's door (with some jiggling I believe).

There are some places that give out a 4 digit code to everyone who uses a combo door. Assuming that there are 100 people who use the door, for example a marina? and allowing no repeats There is a 1 in 100 chance of any code working. Correct me if there is any serious flaws in my logic.

[MacGyver101]

There is a 1 in 100 chance of any code working. Correct me if there is any serious flaws in my logic.

That's very true for electronic locks (and an often-overlooked problem). The mechanical locks that inverseentropy was talking about, though, can't be programmed with 100 combinations.

[jwhou]

There is a 1 in 100 chance of any code working. Correct me if there is any serious flaws in my logic.

That's very true for electronic locks (and an often-overlooked problem). The mechanical locks that inverseentropy was talking about, though, can't be programmed with 100 combinations.

That reminds me of those calling cards that used to be so popular. When your card ran out of minutes, just add one to your account number and you were good to go.

[Oaklandishh]

how recently were they calling cards around, I never heard of this O_O

[MacGyver101]

When your card ran out of minutes, just add one to your account number and you were good to go.

Yeah, great... until you were the guy who paid $10 or $25 and ended up with a card whose number someone else had stolen the credit from.