Chances are, you haven’t. That’s why you have me, right?

Teleduplicating is basically the art of duplicating a set of keys by taking a photo of them from a distance (the photographer can be up to 50 yards away) and then submitting the photo into a software program that will give you the pinning sequence to make an EXACT duplicate of your key.

Think about the keys you have on your key ring right now…

One photo of your house key submitted through a piece of software  and you may as well leave your front door wide open! This is definitely not a piece of software that we would want a burglar to possess.

Computer scientists at the University of California at San Diego have developed the software that can make a duplicate of a key from just a distant photo of it using technology available to almost anyone.

The system is capable of “teleduplication–extracting a key’s complete and precise bitting code at a distance via optical decoding and then cutting precise duplicates,” according to their Web site.

Part of the project’s mission is to make people realize that traditional keys are not really as safe as they might think.

To illustrate the point, they photographed a set of keys they casually placed on the table at a cafe from about 195 feet away using a telephoto lens. From that image (above) they were able to extract enough data to duplicate the keys on the ring perfectly.

The good news is… the group is not planning to publicly release the software code.

And if you haven’t yet figured out the Security Tip I’m going to recommend… here it is:

Hide Your Keys In Public!

Class dismissed!