KY Thieves are Lock Bumping - What is It and How Can You Stop It

If you think you, your family, and your belongings are safe if you have all the doors locked, you are sadly mistaken. Home burglaries are on the rise and thieves are using a tried and true technique to get into your house known as, lock bumping.

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What is lock bumping?

Lock bumping is where criminals insert a bump key into your door lock and bump it with another object to allow undetected entry into your home.

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What is a bump key?

I don't know about you, but I have no idea what a bump key is, so I looked it up.

According to bobvilla.com,

...it’s not a specialty item...It’s basically a blank key with some valleys filed into it for the pins to drop into when a criminal strikes the key with a hard object. If the key can slide into the lock (and many locks use the same basic blanks), it can become a bump key.

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Bobvilla.com went on to say,

Well-prepared intruders may have multiple keys purchased online or prepared by hand. The simplicity of the bump key is part of what makes lock bumping prevention so challenging—it’s not difficult to accomplish, requires little skill, and nearly every household lock is vulnerable.

Are ordinary deadbolt locks safe from lock bumping?

Well, not really. There are special things you can do to the deadbolt lock to make it more difficult to use a bump key to break into your house, but it's not full-proof.

Watch this video demonstration of what you can do to your bolt lock to make it harder for thieves to lock bump or lock pick.

To keep thieves out, you need to install bump-proof locks like these to be completely safe from lock bumping, and undetected, break-ins.

Here are the top 5 bump-proof locks tested and suggested by revolar.com,

1. Schlage BE375 CAM 619 Electronic Deadbolt Lock
2. Master Lock DSO0615 Bump-Proof Single Cylinder Deadbolt
3. Lockey USA Digital M210 Mechanical Deadbolt Door Lock
4. Mul-T-Lock ‎008J-MD1–D Cronus Single Cylinder Deadbolt
5. The Lock Locker Bump-Proof Deadbolt Door Locker

For more information on lock bumping and a true account story of a lock bumping break-in, click, HERE.

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