Originally Posted by
Hypno Toad
Going back to my bike recovery buddy, he doesn't see thieves picking locks ... they don't have that much finesse. The thieves around here are going for cutting tools and brute-force attacks.
I've heard police with decades in the crime division say they've never seen a home or apartment door lock
picked open, either. The door is kicked in or a window is busted or the place wasn't even locked up.
I'll sit up and take notice of bike locks being picked open when I see
Police reports, documentation of undamaged locks lying open on the ground where the bike was parked, miscreants arrested with pick tools, pick tools dropped in the dark and left behind, CCTV video, etc.
The LockPickingLawyer is a YouTube entertainer. (Fun fact: Harry Houdini got his start on the Vaudeville circuit picking locks on stage.) Hey, I find his videos entertaining, too, but beyond taking notice of the occasional bike lock he messes with that pops open with little in the way of skill or tooling (i.e. shimming or raking), all it is is entertainment. He says he doesn't have the skill to pick open an Abloy 362. Angle grinder, less than a minute.
Sheldon Bown advised using two locks of different types so a thief would have to have two sets of breaking tools. (Using two locks is good advice in any case.) If you're worried about locking picking in the way that I'm not, use two locks with different cylinder technology, so the thief will need the correct two sets of lock picks and be conversant in opening both lock bodies.
