Roughly 61,000 biometric gun safes sold nationwide are being recalled after the shooting death of a 12-year-old boy, Fortress Safe and the U.S. Consumer Product Commission announced on Thursday.
The recalled safe poses a serious safety hazard and risk of death due to a programming feature that can allow unauthorized users, including children, access to the safe and its potential deadly contents, including firearms, according to the Naperville, Illinois-based company and regulatory agency.
CPSC noted a recent lawsuit alleging a 12-year-old boy had died from a firearm obtained from one of the safes. Additionally, the agency cited 39 incidents of safe owners reporting the product had been accessed by unpaired fingerprints.
Fortress recalls 61,000 biometric gun safes after 12-year-old dies – CBS News
Sometimes we are too trusty of technology. And I am not going to say I always check that nobody else can access biometric-secured items, but it will be another item to be dutifully check-listed from now on. I know my phone’s biometric only work with the fingers I selected because every time I don’t use the right one or don’t proper the chose one properly, I get the polite Eff You message.
Let’s double check, shall we?
Hat Tip Royk
Read the article, “Made in China” is the first problem—I make one assumption on all things China, and that is nothing is done out of ignorance, incompetence, or by mistake, or for lack of quality control, but rather on purpose simply because China is in fact an enemy of the USA and actively works to subvert America from within.
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It would be a good thing to know exactly how the breach was accomplished. How exactly did the failure occur? Was there a “hack’ provided via the internet? If so, where did the publication originate from? I’m betting that it was a planned crisis purposed to justify the eventual elimination of constitutional rights for the Individual. Collectivism must be embraced………for the children.
How about instead of blind and deaf loyalty to technogizmos we EDUCATE children about firearms to take the curiosity out of the equation…. EDUCATE children so they understand what firearms are and respect the danger. Hiding guns from children leads to this. The dumbing down of America is working…and America and companies get fukked because of dumb ignorance..
Educate people? Educate??!!! That there’s crazy talk!
/Sarc
The use of technology with its multiple and usually hidden defects and bugs to accomplish something that can be done with a mechanical lock is a fool’s game. Yes, mechanical locks have their issues too, but they are known issues, and a good quality lock is going to defeat all but the very most precocious 12 year old.
Don’t get me wrong, I work in IT, and I write software for a living, so I’m not a Luddite. But I do think that there are places where software isn’t the appropriate solution, and locks are among those things where it isn’t, at least for an individual. Individuals, even technologically savvy ones, don’t have the IT resources of an organization to devote to problems of access.
A couple of years ago, I saw a video on ScrewTube on methods to defeat battery-powered locks on smaller safes/boxes. One was using a straightened paper clip inserted between the cover and the box to reset the combination to default.
I’ll stick with mechanical locks, thank you.
My only experience with biometrics is on two laptop computers, from two different manufacturers.
I programmed both with my fingerprint, per instructions. Both say they finished the programming. Neither of them accepts my fingerprint — not at all, not even 10% of the time.
It may be that at age 67 my fingerprint is too worn to be recognized reliably, but if so, why did two different implementations claim to have learned it?
So my conclusion, on evidence available to me, is that biometric locks (at least the fingerprint type) are utterly worthless and incapable of functioning at all. So yes, I’ll stick to combination locks, and given the Liberty Safe debacle, preferably mechanical ones.
A couple years ago, when I was a gunsmith in training we spend some time on the IWA (a smaller Shot Show with way more beer) going around the then new fangled biometric gun safe aisles and unlocking them with various methods.
The old sensors that required touch contact could be defeated by a gummy bear.