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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.
(Score: 1) by Jesus_666 on Sunday March 22 2015, @06:14PM
Extensive research (five minutes with Google) pointed me towards a certain "bosnianbill" who seems to know his locks. Oh look, there's even a buyer's guide [youtube.com]. That video should be a good place to start because it talks more about which features make certain locks hard to crack than about which specific locks to buy. Of course it's only a start. Going for a reputable brand is always a must, though.
Another source of information are independent testing outfits like the German Stiftung Warentest. Those guys regularly test samples of random product groups and are pretty thorough. You may need to pay for the precise test results but at least the rankings are often easily available.
Of course you have to match the lock with what you want to protect. Putting a 500 USD lock on a typical American front door won't do you much good if anyone can just jimmy the door open. Actually, it won't do you much good with a thick, heavy front door either because then they'll go for the windows. It's probably still a good idea to go for a reasonably decent lock, though; fewer people will want to physically break something open (which is noisy) than to just pick the lock. It's just that 100 bucks will probably buy you just as much actual security here as 500 bucks will.