This surveillance system caught this pair of car thieves using the owner’s own keyfob, safe within his house, to steal his own car.
While keyless entry systems have been a major convenience for some car owners, free from regular keys and the drudgery of fiddling around a keyring, they’ve also been a source of grief for some. According to a video uploaded from a home surveillance camera by the West Midlands police in the UK earlier yesterday (Nov. 26, 2017) this car owner got his vehicle nicked from no fault of his own. Using what’s called a signal repeater, the car thieves managed to use the owner’s own key fob to unlock and start his own car. Check out the surprising surveillance video below.
In the video, a pair of masked men appear from a parked car nearby the owner’s house. One of the car thieves does a quick search of the car’s interior, probably to see if the car was already unlocked or if there was a mechanical security device like a steering wheel lock inside. Off to the side, you can see the other thief waving around an electronic device, later on discovered to be a radio repeater, trying to find the signal to this car’s security system. Moments later, we can see the puddle lights on the car turn on indicating he’s gained access to the vehicle. Shortly after, one car thief enters the car and drives off with the other car thief in tow, following behind in their getaway car.
According to one Midlands resident on Reddit who lives near the area, this isn’t the first time this happened. The technology is so simple and bereft that it’s happening multiple times a day.
This is happening 3-4 times a night around the West Midlands. They just walk up and take whatever they want doing this.
If you’re familiar with how a keyless entry system works, the mere presence of a key fob will unlock and drive a car. With this radio repeater, the device is finding, boosting, and repeating the radio signal from the keyfob onto the car outside.
And with failsafe systems that will not shut down the car after the ignition system no longer detects the key fob (if a key runs out of battery), car thieves can drive off with the car and get away quickly. Presumably, with the signal saved, they can then make keys of their own.
While you can’t 100 percent protect your car from someone if they truly want to steal it and are persistent enough, the tried and true methods of old-school mechanical devices may help in these situations. That means wheel locks, hidden ignition cutoff switches, and wired in GPS locators if they do manage to hurdle all your challenges.
