NEW YORK: Remember the hardship you had to undergo the last time you lost your car's keys while several kilometres away from home? Now, you can prevent the re-run of that incident with the help of an app.

New York-based KeyMe is trying to ease that annoying and costly mistake by changing how we duplicate our keys. Its iOS app lets users take a photo of their key and upload it to the cloud to print a new one on the fly, reported CNET.

"We've made hundreds of thousands of keys," Michael Harbolt, KeyMe's vice president of marketing, was quoted as saying.

KeyMe has almost two dozen automated locations in the greater New York City area, as well as a few scattered around in states like Florida, Arizona and Arkansas.

All one has to do is take a photograph of their home, office or car key. The app then uploads that image to the company's system. A press of a button tells the app to deliver the key to the user in the mail.

Even easier, one can travel to one of KeyMe's kiosks and have a new key printed in less than a minute.

Part of KeyMe's security measures against quick scans of other people's keys involve asking users to photograph both sides of the key and to use a blank white sheet of paper in the background.

Can thieves abuse this? No, says the company. KeyMe requires a fingerprint to use its kiosk, an e-mail account to sign up and a credit card and address to print a new key. "We haven't had one instance of our keys being used in a crime," Harbolt reassured.

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