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posted by janrinok on Sunday March 22 2015, @07:06AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-could-go-wrong? dept.

Earlier this year, a new type of mobile app blew the collective minds of many—including NBC News investigative reporter Jeff Rossen. Using the camera of a smartphone, these applications could scan a house key, allowing it to be duplicated remotely. Rossen warned America that it could allow someone to digitally steal your house keys if you left them unattended—by uploading photos and getting shipped a custom-cut copy. Of course, they could do the same thing with your house keys just by running with them to a nearby hardware store. But hackers !

One of the contenders in this market is called KeyMe ( https://key.me/ ). No one is going to shoulder surf your house key with KeyMe—it requires photos of a key placed on a white background, taken from 4 inches away. But KeyMe is doing something that will further boggle minds and will likely raise even more security concerns: using the app, you can store scanned copies of your keys on their server and download them at a kiosk. The company has been rolling out kiosks across the country and has just expanded its fleet after inking a deal to place them at the Lowe's home improvement chain. And you can also share your keys with others via e-mail, allowing them to make copies for themselves.

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Sunday March 22 2015, @01:30PM

    by looorg (578) on Sunday March 22 2015, @01:30PM (#161096)

    As fancy as the idea might be what does your insurance company thing and say about it. That is really all that matters in the end. Oh you got burgled and you had uploaded all your house-keys to the internet you say? Claim denied.

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  • (Score: 2) by tathra on Monday March 23 2015, @04:44PM

    by tathra (3367) on Monday March 23 2015, @04:44PM (#161558)

    insurance company employees get bonuses [propertyinsurancecoveragelaw.com] for denying claims and keeping the claims they can't deny to as little as possible. they're going to look for any excuse to deny a claim? duh, that's exactly how for-profit insurance companies work.