just had a call from my wife who has just realised our ford s-max was broken into last night. sunglasses case and sat nav were nicked – so far so obvious.

also taken was the car manual… any suggestions why? 😕

service logged ?

key codes for getting new keys cut to come back for the car ?

MOT and V5 stored there like an eejit ?

Was the car broken into at home? If not,does the Sat Nav have ‘home’ saved as a pre-set?……

yeah it was on our drive, no damage though as far as i’m told – sounds like someone left it unlocked…

Just make sure the keys are not left anywhere ‘reachable’ from the letterbox etc – this is the most common way to steal cars these days – with the owners keys.

“- sounds like someone left it unlocked… “

easy mistake…..

i had my hyundai raided outside the old house in town the day after the puffer.

bikes and all other items were in the house the only thing i hadnt taken in was a bag of smelly muddy clothes id ridden the whole 24 hours in.

the would be thief opened them and tipped them out and no doubt once he recovered from the smell ran off….

service book if stamped has value, for using on another car

It really is an idiot’s trick to leave a satnav in the car. Did you have a nice visible ring mark on the windscreen from the sucker mount too?

(Speaking from experience as an idiot; some scrote swapped mine for a halfbrick the one and only time I ever did it)

Maybe it was locked…

“I locked my car. As I walked away I heard my car door unlock.
I went back and locked my car again three times.
Each time, as soon as I started to walk away, I could hear it unlock again!! Naturally alarmed, I looked around and there were two men sitting in a car next to the store.
They were obviously watching me intently, and there seemed no doubt they were somehow involved in this very weird situation.
I quickly abandoned my errand, jumped into my car and sped away.
I went straight to the police station, told them what had happened, and found out I was part of a new, and very successful, scheme being used to gain entry into parked cars.
Two weeks later, my friend’s son had a similar experience….While travelling, he stopped at a motorway service area to use the toilet.
When he came out to his car less than 5 minutes later, someone had managed to get into his car and had stolen his mobile phone, laptop computer, sat-nav, briefcase and other belongings.
He called the police and since there were no signs of his car having been broken into, the police told him he had probably been a victim of the latest robbery tactic – there is a device that robbers are using now to clone your security code when you lock your doors on your car using your remote locking device.
They sit a distance away and watch for their next victim. They know you are going inside the store, restaurant, or whatever and that they now have a few minutes to steal and run.
The police officer said always to lock your car manually with the key when parking in a public area. That way if there is someone sitting in a car nearby watching for their next victim, it will not be you.
When you lock up with the key upon exiting, it does not send the security code, but if you walk away and use the remote button, it sends the code through the airwaves where it can be easily intercepted by the device.
This is very real. Be aware of what you have just read and please pass this information on.
Look how many times we all lock our doors with our remote just to be sure we remembered to lock them — and bingo, someone has our code…and potentially whatever is in our car.”
Please share with everyone you know in the hope that we can frustrate these thieves.

hmmm, that sounds pretty terrifying, sputnik, but hopefully it won’t give me too many nightmares!

cougar, you’re probably right. having said that, it was broken anyway so the jokes on the thief. 🙂

sputnik there are alot of newish BMW 3 series that have this nightmare story on the forums. Alot. BMW have been abit shy..

That particular email (and variations thereof) has been doing the rounds for several years and is discredited (see http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/lockcode.asp). There have been some issues with newer cars as the technology/processing power to crack code encryption has got cheaper but it’s still not particularly widespread.

someone stole my windscreen wipers the other day 🙁

alfa mito so not likely to be put on their car…

they will (if they are that clever) identify cars (like my newish 3 series) that have a tiny little emergency key embedded in the remote fob, therefore making manual entry a bit of a faff… If they nick the code off my 3 series they get all the service data too, with luck they’ll see it’s 3000 miles overdue a £120 ‘inspection only’ service and take it in and valet it too 😆

My merc has remote card sensor activated locks. If I walk away with the key card in my wallet it automatically locks. When I walk back I simply touch the door handle and it unlocks. There is also a little black rubber button you can press on the door handle to lock the doors if you don’t trust the walking away method.

I parked it once in a less nice area than normal and cam back to find the rubber button cut off and the electric bits behind all knackered. Locks worked fine but Mercedes wanted over £150 plus vat for a replacement handle because the button is an integrated unit. Now whenever I leave the car I have to trust it has locked itself. I have returned a couple of times over the years to find it unlocked.

hora – Member

sputnik there are alot of newish BMW 3 series that have this nightmare story on the forums. Alot. BMW have been abit shy..

Hora…the BMW thing is different. From my understanding they’re breaking in the car and then starting & stealing it via hacking into the OBD2 port. Completely different to what sputnik described.

That particular email (and variations thereof) has been doing the rounds for several years and is discredited

Yeah. I’ve not seen that one before but the line, “I went straight to the police station, told them what had happened, and found out I was part of a new, and very successful, scheme being used to gain entry into parked cars,” sent my hoaxometer straight into the red. You beat me to Snopes. (-:

Stands to reason anyway. The tale reads as though the perps are forcing the car to unlock so that you have to use your remote; if they can do that, they already have the ability to unlock your car so why alert suspicion? And who on earth goes to the police with “my central locking was misbehaving whilst two men in another car were watching me”?

I wouldn’t automatically assume it was left unlocked these days. Our neighbour’s son has a knife sharpening business he runs from his Ford van- one morning he came down to find it was broken into, knives and wallet (duh!) and more gone. He assumed he’d left it unlocked but 3 cars on the same street were done on the same night. It seems there’s a new way of breaking in that doesn’t require damage to the car (and hence no evidence).

dooosuk They weren’t breaking in to the BMW’s.

I hardly ever lock my car. Often I’ve actually left a window open or door wide open after unloading shopping and forgetting to go back out.

The car does smell of damp sometimes due to heavy rain 😆

…but its a lease car…no dents or scratches on return.

a new way …..

luke …. you would be amazed at how easy even modern cars are to get into.

Ive watched a mates dad get into a car whos keys were on the passenger seat with a pair of pliers and a glove and cause no damage.

well i did wonder about whether it was locked or not, but figured the alarm would have been slightly offputting if it had been properly locked. who knows though, no doubt we were fast asleep at the time…

quite a few of our neighbours have had stuff nicked from the cars when they thought they’d left it unlocked. At the same time our remote activation stopped on the cars. Seemed somone had left a clone/blocking device in a hedge nearby.

so don’t be too sure you left it unlocked. For insurance purposes I would not say this.

luke …. you would be amazed at how easy even modern cars are to get into.

There’s a beautifully simple way to get into lots of cars using just a piece of string. Of course getting in and getting it started are two different things…

my first car only had 1 locking door….

this issue was negated by leaving nothing of value in it.

My car got broken into at uni twice (Pug 206), the first time they’d opened the passenger window, the second time they’d just managed to unlock it. No damage done either time, lost a pair of Oakleys the first time, I’d not replaced them when they went back a week later!

Bit weird really. A recovery guy did once tell me there was some sensor on a 206 you could short really easily to unlock it. Slightly concerning!

But still… that tale up there ^^^ reads like complete crap. Surprised it doesn’t say “if you don’t forward this to 20 people you’ll never find love and you’ll die in a horrible silo explosion tomorrow”.

But still… that tale up there ^^^ reads like complete crap.

They used to be able to do it with TV remote controls, didn’t they? I saw it on TV, so it must have been true.

I’ve seen my car unlock itself plenty of times when I’ve locked it, did it with the last few ones too. It’s because one of the doors hasn’t been shut and is telling you.

That post of Sputniks is like half the crap my Dad sends me every day.

They used to be able to do it with TV remote controls, didn’t they? I saw it on TV, so it must have been true.

No, it was the gun from Tin Can Alley.

thinking about it, Drac, that’s probably what’s happened.

wife said that she realised something was up when the display indicated boot and rear door were open. coming back in the house with small baby to remove from car and various other complications i imagine she pressed the remote to lock it but as both boot and door had been left slightly ajar it didn’t lock, and she didn’t notice the lack of lights flash to confirm the lock.

either that or tom cruise and the scientologists have come down with a magic anti-lock laser that has simultaneously stolen all our remote codes, violated us and then performed a sinister mind-meld which has erased memory of the whole thing.

my first car only had 1 locking door….

I had a car like that, the local junkies still managed to smash a window to get in, putting a massive dent in the door in the process, and stole a broken sat nav to boot. I was most annoyed about the dent in the door…

Easy done when you have sprogs distracting you. My Mrs didn’t know what it mean until I told her.

Seemed somone had left a clone/blocking device in a hedge nearby.

*cough* bollox *cough*, as is the “warning” posted earlier. Been a copper 10 years, spent 2 years on dedicated priority crime units (burglary/robbery/autocrime), as has the other half. Never heard of a case of this even second or third hand (we get briefed on new tools/weapons found by any force in the UK).

New/high end cars are stolen with the keys, and houses are burgled to get them. So many people leave keys near the front door they dont even need to bodily enter, a wire coat hanger or fishing rod through the letter box is enough.

For insurance purposes I would not say this.

No, commit fraud instead 🙄

crashtestmonkey – Member

Never heard of a case of this even second or third hand (we get briefed on new tools/weapons found by any force in the UK).

Good info from the mean streets, I’ll sleep easier tonight. 🙂

some scrote whent through my van before christmas, (i lock it so infrequently the locks are seizing up) they ignored the various power tools, and bits of bike. but they took a case of lovely local ale 🙁 i just know they tried it and went “eeeerrggghh this isn’t even fizzy” they also wound down the passenger window which i thought was a bit odd

I had an Astra SRi and then a cavalier for a while in the 1990s

It was so easy to break into them (ruining the locks in the process) that I used to leave them unlocked but with the steering wheel removed and D-locked through the chassis in the boot. Still thieves would break in and knacker the locks, so I started putting in signs saying “steering wheel and all valuables have been removed”

The astra went in for a service once and they noticed the blanker on the steering wheel was loose, lifted it off and torqued-down the bolt on the steering column so I couldn’t get the wheel off. Car went the next day at work and was written-off 🙄

All remote locks use rolling codes, so someone can grab the last code used to open / unlock the car and it’s of no use as once used its obsolete. The most common trick is to use a jammer so that someone doesn’t actually lock their car as they walk away, they press the button, assume it locked and walk off. This is hard to do with cars that flash the lights or fold in the wing mirrors on locking as you can see if it didn’t lock properly.

Good info from the mean streets, I’ll sleep easier tonight

Knowing that rather than quietly unlock your car in the middle of the night and leave without ever crossing your path they’ll break in to steal the keys…..

magic anti-lock laser

Having seen it done first-hand within the last 12 months I can confirm that holding down the button of a remote control gate/garage door opener within 10m of a Nissan Pathfinder is sufficient to prevent the vehicle remote from locking the doors: always wait for the beep or pull the handle before walking away.

(granted, not a laser but close enough)

ETA: started typing before footflaps posted…

Drac – Moderator
I’ve seen my car unlock itself plenty of times when I’ve locked it, did it with the last few ones too. It’s because one of the doors hasn’t been shut and is telling you.

I am sure the car should warn you if you leave a door slightly open, my van toots the horn!

bails – Member

they’ll break in to steal the keys…..

knottinbotswana – Member

magic anti-lock laser

Having seen it done first-hand within the last 12 months

😯