Your garage door is a major entry point into your home, so it is only natural to wonder — can garage doors be hacked? Are garage door openers secure? You may have heard stories about criminals using loose garage door opener remotes to get into unsuspecting people’s homes. If this is true, what can you do to stop your garage door from being hacked?
Can Garage Door Openers Be Hacked?
The truth is that if you have an older garage door, it can indeed be hacked. The original mechanism for garage door openers was a series of dipswitches set in random directions. This created a unique code that the garage door opener would respond to when a remote with the corresponding code was activated. The problem was that this type of system was child’s play for a criminal to hack. They could do this in many ways. Another common way is for a thief to break into your car and to use the remote on your visor. If you park outside, either lock your remote in the glove box or buy a mini remote that you can leave on your keychain.
They could use a brute force approach, or simply driving through a neighborhood with a remote set to a particular code and firing it at every door until they found one that opened. Or, they could use a “code grabber,” a small electronic device that would allow them to intercept a remote’s signal and steal the code for their own use to open the garage door at a more convenient time — for them, not for you. So how can this type of garage door hacking be prevented?
Modern Garage Door Openers and the Rolling Code
Fortunately, if you have a new garage door opener, you don’t have to worry about it. Eventually, garage door opener manufacturers caught on to the fact that criminals were having a very easy time bypassing their system and getting into people’s homes through their garage doors, so they invented what is called a rolling code system.
The rolling code system or LiftMaster’s® Security+ 2.0®, safeguards garage access with every click, a new code is sent to the Garage Door Opener, ensuring the door does not inadvertently open. Along with the built-in PosiLock® that electronically protects against forced openings and they Alert-2-Close, signals when a door is being closed by MyQ®, will assure you the safest garage door opener on the market. If you have a keycode, that stays the same unless you change it. This renders the code grabbers and loose remote brute force approach useless because even if a criminal got the correct code, it would be different the next time they tried to use it.
Upgrade to a Security+ 2.0 Garage Door Opener Today
If you have an older garage door opener without a rolling code system, you are vulnerable. Fortunately, if you are in the Portland, Oregon, metro area or the Vancouver, WA, area, Best Overhead Door can help. We have a wide range of high-quality garage door openers with reliable security systems based on rolling codes. We also offer smart garage door opener technology, like LiftMaster’s MyQ® system, which allows you to control your garage door from anywhere you can get a wireless signal. It also alerts you whenever anyone opens or closes your garage door at any time for added safety and security.
For an estimate on a modern, safer, rolling code garage door opener, contact Best Overhead Door now.
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