> The best part was my original key wasn’t even a Smart Key, but the existing Kwikset key that came with the house.
So the old property owner (plus who knows who else) can still get into the place — and through every door with nothing more than what used to be the front door key?
Yeah, that’s a big mistake. The author should have at least had a new key cut, preferably one with a difficult-to-pick bitting.
From a security perspective (which is presumably the point when discussing locks), one would use different keys for all doors; or at least for all external doors. I understand the convenience of using a single key, but the author really should have cut a new key instead of using an existing one.
This sounds like common sense, but when you think about it, how is this more secure? You're going to store all the keys together anyway, so if you lose them, you lose them all. And it's not like a thief can make a fake key after picking your lock, they have to pick all your locks individually anyway... So how does it help if your front/side/back/garage doors all have different keys?
It does not make sense to me either unless there are some unspoken assumptions. For example, if you give a copy to a cleaning service, you may want to give only the front door to require access visible from a camera or something like that.
I grew up in a house with nine exterior doors (not very large, just every room had an exterior door) and getting them keyed the same was a wonderful upgrade.
It doesn’t. Someone tried to apply digital key management to the physical world, and mapped it poorly. There is zero value in having each door to the same space have different keys. There is some marginal value in having different spaces having different keys (house, storage unit, detached garage), except that generally you will lose the entire key ring when you lose one, so the separation doesn’t net much.
So the old property owner (plus who knows who else) can still get into the place — and through every door with nothing more than what used to be the front door key?
What a missed opportunity.