[844] No Picking Required: Amazon’s Defective Choice

I think an interesting point to keep an eye on is recommendations with negative side effects, e.g. amazons choice for a high security lock has a terrible flaw. [VIDEO]

I see two problems. First, the Amazon rating system is untrustworthy. There is simply far too much counterfeit reviewing and far too little done about it. This is a systemic problem that just needs to be fixed for the platform as a whole. The more nuanced problem, I think, is the fact that it can create a feedback loop. Something can be popular simply because it's cheap, but "Amazon's Choice" implies quality, which makes people think they're getting a deal because it's also cheap. What sprung to mind for me was LockpickingLawyer's[1] series on Amazon's Choice for things like "padlock", lock, and safe, all of which were of fairly low quality, or at least lower quality than "Amazon's Choice" would suggest. The problem is that, most of the time, people aren't going to know that what they have is low quality because it will almost never get tested and most people don't know anything about lock security. So they trust Amazon to tell them, when really it's the blind leading the blind [1]: [LINK] [2]: [VIDEO]

LockPickingLawyer (Youtube) has a series of videos on the poor quality of "Amazon Choice" for various locks. [LINK] [VIDEO] [LINK] (Branded Amazon Basics) [LINK] [LINK]

I get the "thieves don't pick locks" thing, but I really think it's sleazy as hell if a lock marketed as "high security" can be raked open in one second. That's a low-skill attack. In this case he didn't even have to rake it, because the locks were unshielded: [VIDEO] An unshielded padlock may as well be a warded lock like you'd find on a child's diary.