Spy movies make for safer apartments

We’ve probably all seen a spy movie or TV crime show in which an innocent person’s fingerprint is lifted by sticky tape and later planted at a crime scene to implicate them and draw attention away from the real culprit.

You may even have scoffed at how unlikely that would be. Well, scoff no more, because a version of that is being used to allow illicit access to the highest of hi-tech entry systems in our apartment blocks.

The culprits fall into two categories – holiday-letting hosts in blocks that forbid short-term letting and landlords and head tenants of overcrowded apartments. And it seems the more sophisticated the security systems, the smarter the ways around them.

Early adopters of apartment living will recall the good old days when all you needed were two keys – one to get in the building’s main entrance and garage gate and another for the front door of your apartment.

Over the years it became apparent that thanks to former residents innocently wandering off with keys, there were a lot of keys in circulation.

So then we moved to the electronic key fobs that most of us use these days, plus the intercoms that allow residents to buzz visitors into the block, and possibly even the lift to their floor (and no one else’s).

The fobs could be cancelled so the wandering key problem was solved. And when landlords started cramming a dozen people into two rooms, the number of fobs was never going to match the number of illicit residents.

But there are always ways around these obstacles. First, if there was anyone in the pad, they could let others in, and the last one out would leave the keys in a secret “dead letter drop” for the next occupant to pick up.

MacGyver solution

But that was inefficient (not to mention insecure) so then came the idea of attaching a mobile phone ringer circuit to the entry buzzer switch. Then all occupants had to do was dial the number and the phone would trigger the locks.

That MacGyver solution fell by the wayside when key cutters and computer shops began cloning electronic fobs. Holiday let “hosts” leave these in key safes – the giant padlocks you see attached to railings outside unit blocks.

In response, some buildings moved to ID cards and basic facial recognition – a security guard would match your features with the face on your card or their computer and let you in. A time-consuming and costly option.

So along came fingerprints, but with them, concerns arose about where the biometric information was being stored, especially regarding something so profoundly personal as a fingerprint.

What happened when you moved out? Did the security company keep those records? With computer systems across the planet being hacked every day, no amount of assurances could assuage some fears.

So the latest development is a system that reads your fingerprint and matches it with the biometric information that’s stored, not in a central computer, but on your key fob.

Naturally, the technology to overcome this is already out there. Landlords clone the key fob and copy their fingerprint on to plastic – just like the spies and criminals we mentioned before.

But technology has already taken another leap forward. The latest fingerprint readers can tell if there’s a pulse in the finger and some include full facial recognition.

And if you think that’s as far-fetched as a spy movie, just look at the latest smartphones … because that’s exactly how you unlock them.