Are Smart Locks Safe? 35 Years a Locksmith Explains

I was a locksmith for thirty-five years. I never caught a burglar — I just replaced about four thousand doors they came through. So when people ask me whether a smart lock is safe, I don't answer with the app or the WiFi or the hackers. I answer with the little keyhole on the bottom of it, and with the two screws in your door frame that nobody has ever looked at. The short version: yes, a smart lock is safe, and it is probably safer than what is on your door right now. But the part that opens your door is not the part you paid for. WHAT IS IN THIS VIDEO 1. The verdict, in the first ninety seconds — no waiting. 2. Why the keypad is not your problem (and the one real weakness it does have: four polished buttons). 3. The emergency key cylinder: the fifteen dollar part on a four hundred dollar lock, and why nobody advertises it. 4. The keys you are not managing — the spare in the drawer, the previous owner, the contractor. 5. Why the keyhole exists at all, and when it is actually a feature instead of a hole. 6. The thing that took me ten years to understand: the lock is not what holds your door shut. 7. Three quarters of an inch. Go take one of your strike plate screws out and look at it. 8. How to read the back of the box — Grade 1, 2 and 3 are two blows, five blows and ten blows. 9. The three letters almost nobody knows about: security, durability, finish, and why the lock gets the LOWEST grade it earned. 10. The five things I would tell my own sister to look for, including the key-free category. 11. Batteries, honestly answered, and the nine volt trick you should find out about today and not at eleven at night. THE THREE DOLLAR FIX Take the two screws out of your strike plate. If they are three quarters of an inch, that is the whole problem, right there in your hand. A box of three inch wood screws is about three dollars and it is in the aisle you are already standing in. Put those in instead, and do one in each hinge while you have the screwdriver out. Eleven minutes. You do not need a reinforcement bar and you do not need the branded one. No sponsors, no affiliate links, and nobody sends me anything. The two key-free locks I name are named so you know what to search for, not because anyone paid for it. If you want the whole afternoon written down — the ten minute test before you spend a dollar, the shopping list with the real lengths and gauges, which screws to throw straight in the bin, the door and the frame and the hinges and the strike in the right order, and the phone script for calling a locksmith at eleven at night — it is three guides for twenty-seven dollars at raykessler.vercel.app. The Four Thousand Doors.