How do Kensington locks, Work?

[K i a r a]

Hey,

 

Random boerd question, 

 

I watch a good amount of reviews and always heard the term "kensington lock" , So i finally googled it. And found out what it was, My question is, How does it actiauly prevent your laptop from being stolen?

 

Cant someone just pull hard enough and rip the Lock out of the socket?

 

~ Not that I was planing on getting one, Just wondering.

[ARikozuM]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_Security_Slot

Quote

Kensington locks are not designed to be an impervious protection measure.^[2] Because most computer equipment cases are generally made of plastic or thin metal, the lock can be torn out, though not without doing significant visible damage to the case. The cable itself can be cut if an individual has a wire cutter or bolt cutter sufficiently strong to cut through the cable material, which will vary between different brands of cable. The Kensington type locks are useful to discourage quick grab-and-run thefts of equipment from casually supervised locations such as coffee shops, but cannot prevent the removal of equipment secured in an unattended location.

It's more about delaying theft. It's easier to tell a computer whose locking tab has been broken. This can serve as evidence of theft as some of the K-lock tabs are reinforced making cosmetic damage extremely likely. 

[captain_to_fire]

I'd rather do full disk encryption (Bitlocker or Veracrypt) in the event that my laptop got stolen. Just make sure you use SSD and pick XTS-AES 128-bit encryption which is still very secure and has minimal read/write penalty.

[Zodiark1593]

Such a weak locking device only serves as a deterrent in a place with witnesses. Someone trying to pry the lock of their own laptop without using the key would undoubtedly be suspicious. A cafe, for example, tends to have a lot of people around, though a really sly thief could probably swipe a locked laptop anyway.

 

Anywhere else, don't bother. Better to use a cheap, almost disposable device (old C2D or newer Atom system) if you don't need a lot of performance.

[Zodiark1593]

16 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

alternative strategy: make them steal a cement truck

Bolt the laptop chassis into a giant block of cement, perhaps?

[wasab]

16 hours ago, K i a r a said:

Hey,

 

Random boerd question, 

 

I watch a good amount of reviews and always heard the term "kensington lock" , So i finally googled it. And found out what it was, My question is, How does it actiauly prevent your laptop from being stolen?

 

Cant someone just pull hard enough and rip the Lock out of the socket?

 

~ Not that I was planing on getting one, Just wondering.

If the laptop is made of plastic then it would be quite easy to forcefully ripe the laptop out of the lock and steal it anyways.