New software has been developed which enables punters to build a door key from a photograph.

Scientists at the University of California have developed a software program called Sneakey that can clone a key in "two to three minutes" after analyzing a digital photograph.

Stefan Savage said his algorithm is so sophisticated it easily copes with the low-resolution mobile phone images routinely posted on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. It can also create keys from pictures that are taken from a long way away, too.

The software looks at the key, adjusts the image for any rotations or distortions, then produces a string of numbers that is appropriate for that key. When the numbers are fed into a key-cutting machine it makes a perfect copy.

Since it was a wet weekend they searched the photo-sharing site Flickr for pictures of keys and found thousands of them online. Savage says that we need to protect our keys in the same way we protect the code to our debit card.