Car break-ins

[fillyboy]

Been a spate of break ins in our area, which is quite unusual, apart from a bit of sheep rustling and red diesel theft, County lines drug gangs and the occasional murder, Cornwall is by and large a low crime area.

Anyway, went to put some bits on the van and noticed the n/s door on the wife's car was slightly ajar, I mentioned it to her and she had a look, came back in tears.

No forced entry, bit of a mess, face masks everywhere, and the Tom Tom had gone. I consoled her by reminding her that she hadn't used the Tom Tom for years as all her recent cars have had inbuilt satnav, it was only there because whenever she gets a new car she transfers the s*1t from her old car to the new. In fact, when she pointed out that there was s*1t strewn everywhere, I thought it looked quite normal.

So, she swears blind she locked it, it's keyless entry, she leaves the keys in the front door after locking up at night, I'm guessing some scrotes have a scanning device of some sort to scan the key and gain entry.

My van, parked immediately behind and with several thousand pounds worth of tools on board was un-touched.

 

[transam]

This is the problem van thefts etc

there was a demo down this way over the caper

a load of vans driving slowly in a town centre

plod not taking the issue seriously or doing nowt ??

some one is buying these stolen power tools and they are as guilty as the scum bags who pinch em

 

[sxturbo]

With keyless entry it is wise to put the keys in a tin case and not to leave them by the door, store them in a cupboard or something.

Apparently they can download the coding or something just by creeping up to your house

 

[Captain Nemesis]

With keyless entry it is wise to put the keys in a tin case and not to leave them by the door, store them in a cupboard or something.

With keyless entry it is wise to ask WT* people got so lazy that they didnt want to have to even press an <expletive> button to get into their cars.

 

[Brigade77]

When I first became involved in vehicle recovery cars were very easy to steal. You could open the door locks with a similar key & either hotwire the ignition or use a 'black box' type device if you were going for the same model often. I remember one old lady's '90's Vx Nova that the scrotes drove more than she did, they'd take it as much as 3x a week & return it roughly to the same spot in the morning. Sometimes with more fuel in it ! Your gutter press called this "joyriding", I never saw any joy from the victims.

Over the years security got better, or so you'd think . . . .

I don't have the answer & I don't believe there is one. There will always be theft of & from vehicles & the best you can do is minimise the risks to you, maximise the risks to them & hope they go for an easier option. Personally I like trackers, but even with one of the better ones fitted it can often be 'difficult' to get the Police interested . . .

The absolutely LAST thing you want to happen is to be 'challenged' for the keys. A modern car is virtually impossible to steal unless you have the key or a clone of the key. If they want the car they need the key & they know where 99.5% of you keep your key. Cue belligerent manchild pi$$'ead who swears they ALWAYS keep their key in a safe under their wardrobe while they sleep, but 99.5% of you keep your key within 5 paces of the door you use to enter your home !

My business partner in the recovery co' treated himself to an Audi R6 RS & had it less than a month before waking to 2x youths jumping on his bed & breaking his nose screaming "keys, keys, keys". It was tracked to 5mls away where they stopped & disabled the tracker & hasn't been seen since.

 

[Keithmac]

If your van wasn't behind her car they would have stolen it.

Goolge "Car Relay Theft", they use a reciver next to your front door and a transmitter next to the car, the car basically thinks the keyfob is in range and unlocks.

Loads of Fords have been stolen like this, 20 seconds from entering drive to taking car!.

As said, tin biscuit box or an a NFC blocking wallet for the fob, left in the back if front door is the worst place for it unfortunately.

 

[rsgaz]

she leaves the keys in the front door

How far away is the car? My keyless car can be opened from over 30 feet from the keys. You can't start it, but you can open the doors or boot. I use Faraday wallets, don't forget to do the same for the spare keys, too!

Loads of Fords have been stolen like this

Do you remember when Renault Lagunas started coming with that 'credit card' key, early 2000s? Didn't even need a code grabber or the relay antenna, thieves could just get in it and drive off from outside your house!! Can't get done for "going equipped", if you need no equipment to steal them at all!!

 

[Keithmac]

They've recently started rolling out "Active Keys" where if fob hasn't moved for 5 minutes or so it shuts down.

Should have done that from the start!.

 

[Mottie]

Many years ago when our son was attending his very first festival, we were woken up in the early hours by a policeman knocking on our door. My heart was in my mouth when I saw them but thankfully they just asked us if the car on our drive was ours. Of course it was but they said it had been broken into and the door was ajar. Apparently half the street had had cars broken into. No cars were actually damaged and the police said they were following a gang that were using a converted mobile phone to unlock cars. I noticed that next doors car was ajar with the interior light on and told the police. They knocked them up too. Anyway, we were talking for a good ten minutes with the neighbours over a dwarf wall when the fingerprint lady turned up. The copper told her to do our cars first so we could go back to bed. She came over, screamed and jumped back when a black bloke dressed in black stood up. We had been talking right over the top of him for ten minutes and didn’t even notice him! He started protesting his innocence saying he had been chased by some youths and was merely hiding but a burly copper ran over, threw him over the bonnet of next doors car, cuffed him, Sweeny style, and said "You’re nicked, sonny" in his best John Thaw voice.

They were ransacking cars - they left all our CD's but took two pairs of sunglasses and a pair of designer prescription glasses that Mrs Mottie used for driving. They were somewhere in a sack that others had - I think they nicked about 5 of them in our street that night. Wouldn’t give any stuff back to anyone, said it was 'evidence' and we never got our glasses back even when we went up the station - had to claim on our insurance. Oh, and we could never quite get all the silver powder off of the black trim that the fingerprint officer used.

 

[Mottie]

They've recently started rolling out "Active Keys" where if fob hasn't moved for 5 minutes or so it shuts down.

Should have done that from the start!.

Yeah, my sons Focus had that system.

 

[pcaouolte]

Often you can switch off the keyless entry in the car's settings menu and just use the remote fob to unlock it like in the good old days. If they can get in they can hook up to the OBDII port and add their own key to the list of valid ones to allow them to start the car.

 

[securespark]

Dork.

I know you say it's not joyriding, but you don't normally get your motor back after someone takes it, let alone find more kangaroo juice in the tank!

As for key scanning, don't these things have rolling codes?

Did you see the Top Gear show where Hamster removed the hazards switch and replaced it upside down enabling him to bump start the car, although the steering lick would still be on?

 

[pcaouolte]

As for key scanning, don't these things have rolling codes?

A gadget is placed near your house which picks up the signal from the key inside the house and relays that signal to another gadget near the car, the person near the car can open the door because the car believes that the key is nearby. It doesn't matter if the code is rolling or has any encryption because the car is receiving exactly the signal that it expects in real time.

 

[Keithmac]

Dork.

I know you say it's not joyriding, but you don't normally get your motor back after someone takes it, let alone find more kangaroo juice in the tank!

As for key scanning, don't these things have rolling codes?

The keyfob thinks it's talking to the car and car thinks fob is next to it. They just amplify the fobs signal in basic terms.

The OBD2 thefts the use dealer software to write a new key to the car, most motorcycles you need the physical Master Key to code new ones which is much better system.

 

[Bodd]

My biggest nightmare is my van being broken into. I've always had dead locks and slam locks on my vans... that's enough to put them off and find an easier target ×. My locking system and alarm no longer work but they don't know that.