Viesor Labs

One day my wife’s shopping brought me not only a substantial amount of charges on our account but, as well, a little headache that the store personnel forgot to take off one of the skirts that she had purchased. Unfortunately, my wife lost the check for the skirt or did not really want to go back to the store to remove it. That made me the responsible for removing it off the skirt.

First of all DO NOT USE THIS TECHNIQUE IN YOUR WRONGDOINGS!!!! Use it only if you have purchased the item and the store personnel forgot to remove the tag. This article also applies to a simply mechanical tag that does not contain any ink and is not activated by a magnet.

Also, I did not use any hook keys in this procedure that, I am pretty sure, make opening of this lock trivial. Unfortunately, most of the time they are unavailable.

First of all, I was not sure what type of security was inside of this particular security tag. Therefore, first I tried a powerful magnet to open it. I used a magnet from a hard drive as reported to work with some of the magnetically activated security tags. This attempt failed - nothing moved. (Later I found out that this tag was not one of the magnetic ones.)

Hearing the stories that some of the security tags have ink inside I did not dare risking and forcing the pin out. Instead, I carefully started doing a “lobotomy” of the tag.

First, I cut off the top of the longest tail of the tag and found out that there was no ink in it but only a magnetic strip - the one that makes the alarm go off when you carry it through the store entrance. This operation came out to be pretty useless in opening the tag as it had not revealed any parts of the actual lock.

Then, I moved on onto cutting the rest of the top of the tag. Forgot to mention, any attempts of just prying the top off the tag with a screwdriver or a knife did not result in anything good - the housing of the tag is very strong and is glued together with the bottom very well.

After the top was removed everything became very clear. No ink .. no magnetic parts … just mechanical lock. Pressing with a screwdriver on the side of the metallic membrane opened the lock. The mechanism of this type of the security tag is pretty interesting. The security hook incorporated inside the tag prevents a simple poking with something sharp from opening the lock.

So, basically, the way the mechanism works is: the security hook (1) is being pushed away opening a passage for the main key to press on the side (2) and deflect the metallic membrane away from the pin. Simple and Brilliant!

After the tag was taken off I decided to see what would be an easy way to take this type of the tag without cutting the plastic. After several trials it seemed like drilling a hole (making it with a hot object or else ) on the side of the tag and then just using a screwdriver and such to open the lock was the easiest solution in absence of a special hook key.

If you know a faster way to do the same, please, share.

Tags: security tag