Comment by jeffbee
2 years ago
I hate to break it to anyone but most locked doors can be opened "in seconds" by a variety of means. For the most part the locked state is a signal of prohibition, rather than a meaningful enforcement thereof.
2 years ago
I hate to break it to anyone but most locked doors can be opened "in seconds" by a variety of means. For the most part the locked state is a signal of prohibition, rather than a meaningful enforcement thereof.
I could open any locked door at my high school by slipping my ID in the gap between the door and the frame and wedging the bolt open. I kind of suspect that forty years later, this vulnerability remains.
Former locksmith here. That is called "to flipper" a door. (Guess that is where the flipperzero name comes from)
However you can only flipper doors that are held closed by the latch bolt. If the lock deadbolt is engaged, you cannot flipper it, because the deadbolt will not budge when manipulated by a card or piece of plastic.
Technically a lock without an engaged deadbolt is not really "locked" but "closed". That being said, an unbelievable amount of people believe their doors are locked when in fact they are closed.
"Locked doors only stop honest people" -Abe Lincoln
And especially in hotels, locked doors aren't about keeping everyone out forever (there's dozens of reasons that'd be an awful idea, from cleaning staff needing access to medical emergencies).
They're about making it inconvenient enough / loud enough to gain unauthorized access that someone is going to notice and complain to the manager.
Even then, some of those means are noisy, require special equipment or skills or make it obvious a break in happened.
Most locked doors can be bypassed even faster in some other way than unlocking them. A rock through the window...
> Most locked doors can be bypassed even faster in some other way than unlocking them. A rock through the window...
This is a bit harder when said window is only reachable from the outside, and is 78m above ground level (and all the walls are brick, so they're stronger than the wooden door).
Locks that most people are willing to spend the money to buy are purely there to keep honest people honest.