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In: Technology
The actual locking mechanism is pins inside the lock for your standard tumbler lock. This is why one side of the key has a bunch of high and low points. Inside the lock are pins cut to various heights and those high and low points make it so they all like up at the same height right at what’s called the shear line (the point between the moving and stationary part of the lock).
The slot it fits into is called the warding. It *can* be useful for keeping out keys that aren’t meant for it (for example trying to put a Shlage key into a Kwikset KW1 lock, which by the way is the most common profile in America) but that’s not really their purpose. It’s there to make it harder to manipulate the lock with picks etc. a regular old rectangular hole would make it very easy to put lockpicking tools in there or pretty much anything like a paperclip or whatever, warding isn’t all that helpful with actual dedicated tools but even with those it takes someone who knows a bit about what they’re doing to pick it the old fashioned way.
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