When even eleven year old children have the skills to break into your home, you should sit up and take notice. In 2005, a young girl named Jennalynn showed everyone how skilled she was a bumping open just about any lock she could find. The youngster used a technique called lock bumping to open the locks ranging from ordinary to the M3 high security lock from Medeco.
Lock bumping, also known as “key bumping” and “bump keying” involves a technique in which an ordinary key can be modified with a file so that when it is inserted into a common door lock and tapped, the internal cylinder pins will bump up and the door lock can open. Most common household locks are vulnerable to this manner of picking.
It is thought that the history of lock bumping goes back to Danish locksmiths in 1970. The story goes that they were looking for a faster way to open locks and they developed this method. The public first became aware of the trick in 2005 when an European news program revealed how to use a bump key.
The method of bumping a lock has spread all over the Internet and on many local news stations, showing everyone how easy it is to bypass certain types of locks. These videos and reports are causing great concern for everyone from stay-at-home moms to business owners. Homemade bump keys are a new threat to the security of conventional mechanical locks because they are so quick and easy to make.
In essence, lock bumping exploits a fundamental weakness in the design of the pin tumbler locking mechanism. Physics dictate that if you apply enough kinetic energy to the lower pin this will be transferred to the upper pin which will push up on the spring and create a gap between the two pins for a split second.
The other problem with lock bumping is that newer ‘bump-proof’ locks are being sold my companies such as Medeco and Schlage. Well, as the eleven year old Jennalynn proved, they too are vulnerable to being picked. That means that the uneducated consumer is buying peace of mind but in reality they are no better off with their new locks.
So what can you do to protect your home and family from being a victim of lock bumping? Easy options are installing the very best new locks you can afford. They might be hard enough to bump that they will scare away an amateur. Other options include installing motion sensitive outdoor lighting and a home security alarm. Professional thieves look for easy targets and if you do all of that, there is a good chance they will go elsewhere.