The deadbolts you should considerĪll of this isn’t to say we would ever recommend that you get junky hardware. The most important stat you need to know about to protect your home is that burglars avoid homes that are well lit, and that have security cameras and/or security systems. It surely must happen, but it’s the wrong thing for a homeowner to focus on.

Instead, imagine a person furtively jiggling door knobs or attempting a quick smash-and- grab versus someone standing at a door, adrenaline flowing, and taking an unknown amount of time to fiddle with a collection of lock picks, hoping to get it right before being spotted and the cops arrive. Burglars aren’t dealing with that,” he said. “Here’s the thing: Burglars are not picking locks. Security expert Marc Weber Tobias confirmed that notion in our guide to the best door lock. When you put all of these stats together, you realize that burglars are, quite sensibly, looking for the fastest way to do their job, with the least risk of getting caught. But one of the few sources around- a UNC Charlotte study from 2012 (PDF) of repeat criminals from three states-suggests this is a skill that is rarely employed. The Bureau of Justice Statistics (which collects data on crimes nationwide) doesn’t have information on how often lock picking occurs during burglaries. That includes everything from prying open or kicking in a door or forcing a window, in addition to lock picking. About two-thirds of them forced entry or attempted forced entry. And in most cases burglars aren’t usually relying on cat-burglar skills: FBI data reveals that in 2019 about a third of burglars gained access to a property through unlocked or open entrances. This makes sense because time is an important factor for a burglar-the Insurance Information Institute says that most burglars give up if it takes more than four or five minutes to break in. Estimates vary, but many insurance and alarm companies report that most burglaries take about 10 or so minutes (and sometimes much less). Burglars are just like us-they’re in a rushĬrime statistics can be skewed, but the trends overall for burglary are steady and very encouraging: Burglaries have decreased by more than 80% since the ’80s. And now we don’t think it’s all such a big deal. We also took a deeper look at the FBI’s 2019 annual report on crime statistics (the most recent available) and at all of the studies of burglary rates we could find.

But that’s for another post.)Īfter a year or so of going through this process-and the discovery of a couple more locks that were readily pickable-we had a discussion among editors and did a bit of research. (We also attempted to fool fingerprint readers, with some success. We then excluded vulnerable locks from being Wirecutter picks this happened twice. When we were successful breaking into a lock, we attempted to repeat the process, to ensure it wasn’t a result of dumb luck. So for the past year or so, during testing for our guide to the best smart locks, we’ve attempted to break into our smart-lock candidates.

On the surface this is not great, for obvious reasons (unless you’re a movie-star hero).

Walmart door locks and deadbolts