[pixl97]

Locks are not security.

They keep honest people honest and give a few moments more work to those that are dishonest. It's a promise to society that you'll act decent. Needless to say they mean nothing to those that break promises.

In almost all cases, with a lock or not, by the time you figure out the lock is broken (10 minutes or 10 days) your shit is long gone and you better have your security onion setup with multiple layers if you want the foggiest idea what happened.

If you have an above average risk of having your shit stole or becoming under attack you better have a whole shit load more layers in your defense or you're screwed.

[wat10000]

Locks raise the cost of bad behavior, which makes it less likely. They can still be quite meaningful to someone who breaks those promises, if that person doesn't have the tools or time to defeat the lock, or is just plain lazy.

I live in a pretty low-crime area. From time to time, residents complain about things being stolen from their cars. Every single time that I've seen, the cars have been unlocked. A thief certainly could smash a window to steal from a locked car, but the thieves around here seem to be opportunistic and won't go that far.

[pixl97]

And a larger lock pick tool does pretty much zero in the case you listed as that is not opportunistic. Those are pretty much the open up and steal when they see an unlocked car kind of people.

It does nothing for the type of criminals that work in groups and steal tires of 50 cars at once, or whatever soup de jour of automobile parts they want at that moment.

[wat10000]

My point is, locks do more than just keep honest people honest, and they are meaningful to some people who are up to no good.

I wasn't addressing picks at all. My opinion there is that it's the lock maker and lock owner's responsibility to resist picking, and the rest of us have no obligation to keep it more difficult by not making tools.

[observationist]

It's a lot like turn signals - social communication that goes beyond the practical benefit. If you're using your turn signals, you're saying "I'm aware of the environment and a good participant in the game we're playing because I'm following the rules". If you don't use signals, you're telling people that you're not following the rules, and that makes you suspect in all the other social games. Kinda funny to do some people watching with that perspective, and to start to see how many assumptions are based on society being high trust - the exploitable vulnerabilities are endless, and people communicate a lot about themselves in the rules they choose to follow or break.

[pixl97]

>do some people watching with that perspective

100%, especially while driving as you say. When teaching my daughter driving I tell her to watch for people other people breaking the law/bad driving in other ways and distance yourself from them. The probability of them doing something else stupid in the next few minutes when your in their vicinity approaches unity, and it reduces your chances of being what they hit.