I’ve read that these models, where you can unlock the car as long as the key is in your pocket etc, are susceptible to thieves.
This is true as my Toyota Auris hybrid vanished from where my Mrs. left it whilst shopping in Finchley yesterday. Can I presume that a scanner located in a nearby house can pick up the signal whilst a standard remote key only emits a signal when a button is pressed?
Should I avoid keyless entry?
Can’t speak to the police - had to fill in a form online. Not holding out much hope for a result........
I keep my keys in a RF protected pouch, both in the house and when walking around. The pouch comes with two partitions, one that stops the key being read and one where the key will work. I bough mine off of ebay. When the keys are in the house, they are in the RF bit of the pouch
A faraday bag or case isn’t the most secure thing but it will help, proper rfi shielding will or a metal box, in the house all of our keys are in a safe at all times.
Unfortunately you don’t know when they read your key.
You’re correct regarding the keyless entry type. The fob emits a continuous signal whereas the older style only emits when the button is pressed.
Car thieves use a boost device to capture and amplify the fob signal. One guy with the booster will stand by your front door (most people leave their keys close to the front of the house), the device grabs the signal and then another guy will open the car and start it up.
As far as your cars concerned everything is hunky dory and lets them drive away. No damage, easy as pie.
I keep my LR Discovery and Passat keys in an old travel sweet tin, stops the signal completely as long as you make sure the lid is on correctly. I can stand right next to the car with the tin and the doors stay locked.
Scumbags tried to boost the LR a couple of months back from our driveway. When they couldn’t highjack the signal they smashed a couple of windows just for good measure. Nice people.
The older fobs can still be used to capture a signal I believe but the thieves need to be nearby when you press the button to store the data. They use a different device for this as far as I know but it can be done.
I’ve added a steering lock device to the LR as well now for overnight. Hoping that’s enough to make the scum move on.
What happens is a thief will have his accomplice stay within a few meters of the key with a transmitter, this picks up the signal your key is broadcasting and transmits it to the thiefs receiver. This receiver then rebroadcasts the signal to the car which then unlocks and can be started. Once started most cars will keep running until switched off allowing the thief to drive away.
Keeping your keys in a faraday bag when not in use will prevent this but negates the convenience of keyless entry.
Other physical safeguards such as a disc/crook lock will also stop a thief but again negate any convenience.
Really manufacturers need to introduce safeguards to stop this kind of thing, message delay detection, 2 factor authentication or moving to a smartphone / app unlock and start where things like biometrics can be used to verify the owners identity.
As I understand how they work, when out of range the engine will cut when the car next stops so they won’t be driving far.
Or maybe some sort of passive device is better. Perhaps a piece of some material, metal say, that has a complex shape that you have to place in a matching shape in the car? Perhaps I should patent that idea.
Seriously, what does keyless entry actually offer to make car ownership significantly easier or more enjoyable.
OrOriginally Posted by Slamdoor
Your wife left it “running”.....
Easily done on a hybrid with no sound to give it away in electric mode....
Someone jumps in and bye byeeeeeee......
My mother who is 74 did this outside her house a few days after getting a new keyless entry car...it was only when a neighbour came round and asked her why she had left her car running for nearly an hour...
Having a physical/mechanical component, it can be made independant of battery power even!!
Possibly cheaper to manufacture too!
Apparently not, engine stop button needs to be pressed to cut power.?
The new models have motion activated keys, so the keys don’t transmit when sitting on your hallway table. This seems like a relatively simple fix that could be offered to owners of vulnerable cars that are still within warranty and not at huge cost to the manufacturers
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Not all companies have this yet...my Mazda for one.
An alarm goes off if you exit the car whilst ‘running’ + doors won’t lock.....
Well when my keys are in the faraday pouch part, you can have it in your pocket and you can't get into the car, so it is working pretty well.
Probably daft idea but could cars be designed to use NFC and hence phones to gain entry/drive?
I have it on 3 out of 4 cars, and I really miss it on the one which doesn't. It's one of those features that you don't appreciate until you have it, and I doubt that I'd buy another car without.
When it comes to security, you can always have at most 2 out of 3 from Security, Convenience and Cost. The newer generation of motion-detecting key fobs will help to prevent relay attacks, but there's no doubt that the bad guys will always continue to find new ways to steal cars - it's not as if cars with physical keys were exactly immune from theft!
In the meantime, all sorts of get-rich-quick merchants are flogging various overpriced junk to the naive for them to store their car keys in, when a metal biscuit tin works just as well.
I’m glad they work, unfortunately the clever bad guys will start using harmonics and find a spot in the spectrum where the bag will become invisible, go ask any EMC lab.
I don't like it at all. It only opens the door on the second pull of the door handle, never the first. I keep forgetting what I've done with the keys & have to hunt all over the car for them when I get to my destination. If there was a keyhole to put the key in I'd always know where to find them. Plus I've several times forgotten to push the engine stop button, or maybe pushed it twice I'm not really sure but it seems easy to do, left the car having taken the keys & have come back to the car later to find the engine has been running all that time. It's on my list of things not to have next time I renew my car.
I have in a few occasions got out without switching the engine off but as pointed out above my car beeps and won’t allow you to lock the car.
I think Volvo already has or is developing the access by phone.
I know, I worked for Toyota and now work for Merc.
I see cars left running on a weekly basis......
The person is preoccupied and don’t realise the car hasn’t locked when they touch the handle to activate the lock. Usually a young lady with a mobile glued to her hand.......
- - - Updated - - -
Mercedes introduces it in 2016 and pretty much no-one wants it
Last edited by RJM25R; 2nd July 2019 at 20:16.
Any idea why not?
To me that would be ideal.
I have a 2016 Volvo that thankfully doesn’t have one of these thief -friendly keys, but it has a daft ‘stick the fob in a hole on the dash, press a start button, electric handbrake releases as you lift the clutch and off you go’ sort of arrangement. I recently bought a very low mileage 2015 Golf Cabriolet with an old school key and a proper handbrake, and I just find it so much easier to operate. I’ve been driving the Volvo for over 3 years now and I now realise how much these ‘upgrades’ irritate me. Whatever was wrong with keys and keyholes ffs??!!
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Does that mean I need a new more complex phone to go with my new car?
Become environMENTALLY friendly and get a bike....... Only joking
Unfortunately many of my friends have had cars taken off the drive by manipulating the signal.
2 things have been very helpful, one a deterrent and another more of a helping hand to get the car back.
1. A system called "ghost". You have to press or push certain buttons in the car in a particular fashion, this is unique as it could be any particular sequence which is totally independent of any other vehicle and is down to the proprietors choice........eg before the vehicle starts you have to turn the radio on....... Then push the indicator to the right and put the fog light on to start the car. Only you will know this particular order. Apparently only cost a few hundreed pounds.
2. Incase all fails........ Tracker but these scums do have a scrambler for it. You may get within a few hundreed yards but not be able to pinpoint it as it could be in a industrial estate. Something similar happened to my accountant.
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Too late now but found out that the keyless entry can be disabled in the customer preferences menu. Nice to know next time around.
I thought that is why the current trackers are VHF so they cant be blocked or jammed.
If memory serves me correctly, it was a 2017 Mercedes E class.
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With all due respect that doesn't say what Tracking device was fitted, currently the VHF devices cannot be blocked or hidden, I am told insurance companies only insist on trackers for vehicles over 50k
I am merely relating a incident........I do not have technical information in regards to the vehicle.
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Maybe a simple GPS/sim card tracker?
I disable the keyless entry feature on my car, - it wears out the battery also
Spent a whole chunk of my working life, working with EMC and Electronic Warfare counter measures, so think I will be ok.
With keyless entry/touch handle locking you never really know if all the doors have locked. I found this one evening while walking past my car on the drive (key in the house) and tried a rear door as I was passing. The door was unlocked/opened as I tried it. All other doors were locked. Obviously checked it by locking the car and putting the key out of rage- 4 out of 5 times that door didn't lock. If you were out it is almost impossible to check everything is locked as it unlocks when you try a handle because the key is with you.
My motorhome on the other hand has a monitored tracker device with a driver recognition fob. If its moved or driven (with or without keys) without the DR fob in the vehicle it alerts the monitoring station which then calls you with a theft alert. If you confirm the vehicle is stolen they track the vehicle but can also remotely stop and immobilise the engine, all be it when the police have sight of the vehicle and give permission to the monitoring station to stop it when its safe to do so.
Neil
I think that, like many so called features on many modern cars keyless entry is the answer to a question that no-one asked.
My Golf has a few features I consider superfluous such as tinted rear windows, heated seats and fog lights which come on at low speed manoeuvring, none of which I would have specced, which all came with the Match Edition trim. Nothing useful to me but a heated front screen which would have been nice was not included naturally.
I cannot remember the last time I found any of these useful but,conversely, my wife hankers after a heated steering wheel!
One of the reasons why I love our Up which is pretty basic in Move Up trim but I would have preferred it with steel wheels rather than alloys.
Seems like a failure of central locking which can happen with key as well. Obviously easier to check though people don't normally check all the doors.
I thought with keyless touching the handle would unlock but if you touched it again it would lock?
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