How To Secure Your Front Door Against Lockpicking

While many burglars do not pick locks, lockpicking is still a threat to homeowners and can still be used as a method to gain entry into your home. If you believe that your home has been broken into, you'll need to know the warning signs that your lock was picked.

How to Detect a Picked Lock

Lockpicking is a covert form of entry and often does not leave a lot of evidence behind, but a locksmith can sometimes determine that the lock was picked. There might be markings on the pins, keyway, actuator, or pin chamber. 

While the act of picking the lock can leave evidence behind that the lock was picked, the act of picking the lock will not necessarily damage it unless there are repeated lockpicking attempts.

Locks That Are Difficult to Pick

Many locks can be picked. However, there are some locks that are difficult to pick or those locks that nobody has learned how to pick yet.  Also, you may choose to opt for a keyless lock that will be impossible to pick. Some keyless locks are able to generate their own power. With the right tools, it may still be possible to remove the lock, but it will be more difficult.

As for pick-resistant locks, the intruder picking the lock will need to have more skill or time when bypassing it. Pick-resistant locks will often come with an extra set of tumblers or will be designed so that the key must be doing two things at once to unlock the door. For example, the pin tumblers might need to be raised to a particular level and then need to be turned to the left or the right. 

In another type of lock that is difficult to pick, the cylinders have a pin-within-a-pin. Like many locks, they can still be picked, but the tools required to do so would be very difficult to create.

Bump Keys

Intruders will often use bump keys to try to bypass a lock. To prevent this from happening, you'll want a lock that has a keyway that the bump key is not likely to have. The burglar will still be able to take a photograph of your lock, obtain a blank, and create a bump for your lock. However, they are less likely to do this because they are more likely to get caught especially when you use other security measures such as surveillance cameras.

Contact a local locksmith to learn more about how to keep your front door more secure.