Hacker News Reader

Comment by incongruity | Hacker News Reader

> That leaves "finding your keys within your home" as the only truly "officially supported" use case.

That is hardly true. Case in point - my wife put down her keys at a store and managed to leave without noticing (this was early after AirTags hit the market). I was driving and we left without recognizing that a few hundred dollars of keys had been lost.

Later that day, we noticed. She called a few stores all said there were no keys found. We then tracked the AirTag - and in fact, it was at the store. We returned and were able to locate it, at one of the registers in a lost and found. We never would have found that it not for the AirTag.

Since then, we’ve used them to not leave things behind, to find things lost at home and elsewhere. There are indeed many legitimate uses despite your want to claim otherwise.

View on HN

>I was driving and we left without recognizing that a few hundred dollars of keys had been lost.

What do you mean by "a few hundred dollars of keys?" Do hardware stores charge more than a few dollars per key in your area? Were these private keys to a crypto wallet?

If your car has a smart key, it can be over $100 to replace and another $100 to have a dealer or locksmith re-program it.

Edit, more things that are expensive:

- if you live in an apartment with nfc entry, they might charge an arm and a leg to replace it, even if the actual device is only a few dollars

- IDK how much it costs to replace an apartment mailbox key, but I've been warned that if you lose one they need to re-key the whole mailbox

- maybe you don't feel safe with a house key in the wild and need to re-key your house (same for your car/s)

- if you have work keys, they might over-charge to replace lost keys

> if you live in an apartment with nfc entry, they might charge an arm and a leg to replace it, even if the actual device is only a few dollars

That's just theft — plain and simple. The only half valid argument I've heard is to discourage carelessness leading to loss of the key and weakening of the building security. But that's moot in places where the garage gate is broken and left open half the year (my current place) or where people can casually wait for someone to walk in and tail gate them without anyone complaining.

By the way, I purchased a proxmark a long time ago to play with and to date, it has paid for itself many times over, by allowing me to carry my building keys the way I like to (cards vs bulky key fobs) by duplicating them where otherwise it would cost $100 or impossible.

Can't wait for keys on Apple Wallet to become mainstream.

Unfortunately, it's accurate. Theft is what I'd call the racket that is management companies in London.

In my case, with a London apartment, it's an "Administrative Fee", £150 to replace your lost fob.

Then for my costs as an individual, it was not only that fee, but also new locks for external door(s) and mail box, another administrative fee for the communal meter cabinet/room key, new Kensington lock and a car key/fob when my wife's keys were "lost in a known location yet never again found".

That is to say, "losing" those keys is a £300-500 affair.

At first I thought you bought the proxmark with the purpose of dating. Also, how does the proxmark work? Does it store the signal of a card key or something like that?

It reads content of RFID tags. Once you have the content, you can write it onto another tag and essentially duplicate the key.

Some tags are easier to read than others. But so far, with a bit of digging around the net, I've been able to read various key cards and copy them.

- USB drives

- U2F authentication keys

- really expensive AirTag holders (https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMN73AM/A/airtag-herm%C3%...)

And the AirTag is another $30!

Don't forget the $349 Hermès AirTag holder

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMN73AM/A/airtag-herm%C3%...

To be fair, that includes an AirTag :)

Proximity key fobs at $100+ each and programming which can run $80-100 each, a few house keys (I change the locks of keys have been out of my control in a way that can plausibly be tied to my identity, lest someone make a copy and turn up uninvited - that’s another $100+), and $30 for an air tag.

I didn’t make up those numbers.

Oh wow, I thought maybe it was a typo. Thanks for the details!

Yeah - I learned the hard way a while back when someone in our household misplaced another key… and found it right after we’d replaced it/paid all that.

fyi, If you ever have to get your locks rekeyed again, ask for a kwikset smartkey cylinder.

Its a clever little device that will let you rekey a lock yourself with a new key as long as you still have at least one of the original keys.

Uh, no. See The Lockpicking Lawyers videos on Kwikset Smartkey cylinders, including: https://youtu.be/XqsAFdFsQmQ

> What do you mean by "a few hundred dollars of keys?" Do hardware stores charge more than a few dollars per key in your area?

If you're living in an apartment complex or skyscraper, re-keying can get extremely expensive.

Do hardware stores charge more than a few dollars per key in your area?

A replacement key for my wife's car costs $1,200. And it's not even a newer, or expensive car.

It's been a long time since you could get many car keys done at a hardware store.

And it's not even the electronics anymore. One locksmith I called said it's about the fancy engraving. They can't afford the tools to do that kind of work, and they just refer people to the dealer and to suck up the $1,200.

Now that I think about it, I wonder if that might have been covered under insurance.

Curious which manufacturer... Porsche or Audi?

Neither. As I said, it's not an expensive car. It's actually quite ordinary.

VW are also in that price range. I think I paid $850…

Reply on news.ycombinator.com