Sunday, August 30, 2009

How to Lock Your Car and Why

I locked my car but as I walked away I heard my car door unlock. I went back and locked my car again three times, but it unlocked each time. I looked around and there were two guys sitting in a car in the fire lane next to the store. When I looked straight at them they did not unlock my car again.

How to lock your car safely:

While traveling, my son stopped at a roadside park. He came out to his car less than 4-5 minutes later and found someonehad gotten into his car, and stolen his cell phone, laptop computer, GPS navigator briefcase. You name it, they stole it.

He called the police and since there were no signs of his car being broken into the police told him that there is adevice that robbers are using now to clone your security code when you lock your doors on your car using yourkey-chain locking device.

They sit a distance away and watch for their next victim. They know you are going inside of the store, restaurant, orbathroom and have a few minutes to steal and run. The police officer said to manually lock your car door-by hitting thelock button inside the car, that way if there is someone siting in a parking lot watching for their next victim itwill not be you.

When you hit the lock button on your car upon exiting it does not send the security code, but if you walk away anduse the door lock on your key chain, it sends the code through the airwaves where it can be stolen. This was something totally new to us.

Be aware of this and please pass this note on. Look how many times we all lock our doors with our remote. Just tobe sure we remembered to lock them. Someone can then steal our code and whatever was in the car can be stolen.

Snopes article on this e-mail note available here. Some of the information presented isn't entirely accurate.

While early Remote Keyless Entry systems were completely vulnerable to this time of attack, modern ones aren't. A current system uses a random code generator and thus makes a code grabbing device ineffective.

There's nothing wrong with manually locking your doors, but it would appear your car isn't as vulnerable as the e-mail would suggest.

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