Don't Get Bumped - How to Protect Your Home from Bump Keys

Imagine coming home from a nice night out at a restaurant, and you open your front door to discover that your home has been ransacked and burglarized. After the initial shock wears off, you look for signs of a forced entry, but can’t find any. Your windows and other exterior doors are all intact, and your locks show no signs of being broken or picked. How in the world did that criminal get into your house? It’s almost as if he had his own key to your home, and just waltzed right in. The unsettling reality is that if he used a technique called lock bumping, that’s exactly what he did.

Lock bumping has become the technique of choice for many burglars and other shady characters, because it’s very easy to perform, and it leaves no signs of forced entry or damage. The only thing required for a burglar to bump your lock is for your doors to have old-style cylinder locks that are vulnerable to bumping, and unfortunately, 90 percent of homes in the U.S. fit into this category. To make this scenario even more unnerving, the only thing a criminal needs to bump your lock is a $3 key and access to the Internet; there are scores of lock bumping tutorials on the Web that feature step-by-step diagrams, along with a plethora of how-to videos on YouTube.

So What Exactly is Lock Bumping?

The practice of lock bumping has actually been around for decades. Professional locksmiths often use this technique to gain access to locks whenever a key has been lost or stolen. The reason why it’s called lock “bumping” is because a specially cut key (known as a “bump key” or a “999 key”) is inserted into a lock and then struck–or “bumped”–with a screwdriver or some other object in order to open the lock. Using a simple principle of physics, the energy created from striking the bump key is transferred to the pins within the lock. These pins jump up for a fraction of a second, creating a shear line that allows the cylinder inside the lock to turn, which then enables the lock to be opened.

Beware of the Bump Key

So how does this seemingly magical bump key actually work? As mentioned earlier, bump keys are also called 999 keys because each one of their ridges are cut to the maximum depth of 999 in a key-making machine. This special design makes them very easy to use and highly effective on conventional pin-and-tumbler locks. They’re also super-easy to obtain; in fact, there are entire websites devoted to selling bump keys online. Any amateur criminal can simply buy a bump key for only a few bucks from these websites (or even eBay), view a quick lock bumping tutorial and be well on their way to wreaking havoc on the homes of hard-working people all over the city. As crazy as all of this sounds, it is absolutely (and unfortunately) true.

Bump-Proof Locks: A Surefire Way to Protect Against Lock Bumping

So what can you do to protect your home against lock bumping? The answer is to get rid of your traditional pin-and-tumbler locks as soon as you can and replace them with bump-proof keyless locks. One of the most effective bump-proof keyless locks on the market is the Lockey M210 keyless deadbolt. Lock bumpers are no match for the M210; not only is it bump-proof, but its hardened steel deadbolt is hacksaw-proof as well! As far as convenience goes, you won’t have to worry about keeping up with keys; you simply need to enter your passcode into the push-button keypad, and you’re inside in a flash. The lock body of the M210 is made of a strong, heavy and durable zinc alloy, and it offers weatherproof performance as well. With the Lockey M210 installed on your exterior doors, you can sleep soundly at night, knowing that your home is protected from any would-be lock pickers or bumpers.

There’s a lot of truth to the statement that nothing is more valuable than your peace of mind. When you have a traditional pin-and-tumbler lockset on your door, it’s hard to have any peace of mind when you think about how easy it is for some random stranger to enter your home using nothing more than a $3 bump key. A bump-proof keyless lock will go a long way towards keeping those kinds of worries off your mind, and keeping would-be burglars out of your home.

Lockey M210, M210-EZ Keyless Push Button Deadbolt Lock