Safe manufacturers generally ship their products with a factory-standard combination. Many people fail to change them once the safe is in use:
In England many years ago, chatting with a locksmith while he worked, I learned the following thing: One of the country’s leading manufacturers of safes shipped all its products set to a default opening combination of 102030, and a high proportion of customers never reset it.
He: “If I need to open a Chubb safe, it’s the first thing I try. You’d be surprised how often it works.”
This came to mind when I was reading the story about Kennedy-era launch codes for our nuclear missiles:
…The Strategic Air Command greatly resented [Defense Secretary Robert] McNamara’s presence and almost as soon as he left, the code to launch the missile’s [sic], all 50 of them, was set to 00000000.
I use a random-string generator for my passwords and change them often. I guess safeguarding my Netflix account is more important than preventing a nuclear holocaust.
