Thieves GPS tracking cars from trail centres!

Sorry if this has already been posted but couldn’t find it from search box

😯
That’s not good

Any clues for those of us not infected by the social media bug?

Supposedly thieves fitted a gps tracker to someone’s vehicle to find out where to go to steal their bikes…
I call bullshit – they can find that out by simply taking note of the Reg. no not spending large amounts on a tracker, then having to crawl under the car to fit it…

What do we think, husband checking up on Her suspecting playing away?

It is remarkably clean for something that’s been attached to the underside of a car….

Edit: “bikes” as in MX bikes by the look of it

Hmmm on the reg thing how is that done?

I’m Not going to post on here, but it’s very easy and considerably cheaper…

Can we get the title edited as this appears to have naff-all to do with trail centres or bicycles? It’s all a bit Daily Mail

Supposedly thieves fitted a gps tracker to someone’s vehicle to find out where to go to steal their bikes…
I call bullshit – they can find that out by simply taking note of the Reg. no not spending large amounts on a tracker, then having to crawl under the car to fit it…

What do we think, husband checking up on Her suspecting playing away?

Not at all bullshit – very real threat. GPS trackers are so cheap and hard to spot these days it’s not even funny. Takes seconds to fit and you can follow a car home, get an address remove tracker and come back whenever you want. Not sure if they are actually being used in the bike trade to pick out cars from trail centres, but they are definitely used in other areas of theft.

It’s a bit daily mail but it can’t be far off given the value of your average carbon trail centre bike these days..!

It has been massively reposted around Facebook… I admit I didn’t read it close enough to spot the mx bikes until it was mentioned here!

Yes I’m aware that they are a thing – but if all you wanted to do was find out the address there are far better ways of doing it…
GPS tracking is only an advantage if you want to follow someone away from their registered address…

For those of us not up to date with how to get an address online from a registration no. the tracker option is probably easier and cheaper.

On eBay they are around £25 and magnetic so easily stick to the underside of a car…..scary really.

GPS trackers are so cheap and hard to spot these days it’s not even funny. Takes seconds to fit and you can follow a car home, get an address remove tracker and come back whenever you want.

Not wanting to be over critical, but I can do that without a tracker.

Why would I risk being spotted fitting, and retrieving the tracker, if I’m going to follow them home anyway.

I can just follow them.

Think the point is that they don’t follow everyone – they don’t need to once a few trackers are fitted

Not wanting to be over critical, but I can do that without a tracker.

Why would I risk being spotted fitting, and retrieving the tracker, if I’m going to follow them home anyway.

I can just follow them.

That’s a very inefficient way of doing it though when you can fit 10 cars with trackers then sit back and wait.
What’s the point of following one car when it might well be driving 300 miles or going back to a holiday home? Or you might be spotted or lose them in traffic – all your effort wasted.

More efficient when you can track 10 cars, wait until you’ve got a reasonably certain location on all of them, drive one van round the country and get everything in one go.

I can believe this.

Considering MX bikes cost a fair whack and your average trail centre mountain bike can easily cost £3k plus I don’t think £18 “wasted” on a tracker is really that much.

Wait at the trail centre car park in the morning, watch which cars are unloading the nicest bikes, fit tracker once the owners have headed off into the woods, drive to house and collect tracker / bikes at leisure.

I think we’ve all accepted that bike theft is now a professionally organised criminal endeavour for some well-equipped criminal types. Low sentencing if you get caught (usually community service or a fine), bikes can be stripped and sold as untraceable parts.

Does anyone remember the thread on here where some guy was saying he met some Eastern European lad on a plane who was part of a stolen bike components distribution network across Europe?

Worrying to know the technology is available and cheap, even if its open to debate whether it’s being used for this purpose or not.

Thought I’d look into GPS jammers – but they don’t seem to be the ideal solution…
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/feb/13/gps-jammers-uk-roads-risks

Remember and include the car parking cost as well, on top of the tracker costs..there are far cheaper ways but they tend to require a justification…a tracker is now cheap enough to make them an easier method to employ…

Sounds far fetched but possible I guess. Re. finding out the details via the reg. plate – that would be possible but gives the thief limited info. They could also use the tracker to pick off soft targets, so house breaking is higher risk than finding out who’s staying at the local YHA and has left a van full of bikes in the car park.

average trail centre mountain bike can easily cost £3k plus I don’t think £18 “wasted” on a tracker is really that much.

I bet the average bike cost isn’t anywhere near that.

There have been a lot of thefts on here where people feel they have been targeted, although unsure how as dont Strava to home, take care to make sure they arnt followed etc Didnt realise the fb post was mx bikes, but its not beyond the realm of possibility to imagine this is already being used. Can be fitted in literal seconds just crouching down next to a car, and even if not retrieved again no big deal versus the cost of a bike haul.

There have been a lot of thefts on here where people feel they have been targeted, although unsure how as dont Strava to home, take care to make sure they arnt followed

Considering how many nice bikes you see on full display atop Audi, it’s little wonder people come on here saying they think they were targeted/followed. Equally, you see lots of cars parked outside homes with empty bike carriers atop Audi. It’s like a huge advert for the bike(s) in the garage.

Organised gangs might do more sophisticated stuff, but your average scrotes will just walk/drive down a street and look for tell tale signs.

A GPS jammer would only work if you never switched it off

Considering how many nice bikes you see on full display atop Audi, it’s little wonder people come on here saying they think they were targeted/followed. Equally, you see lots of cars parked outside homes with empty bike carriers atop Audi. It’s like a huge advert for the bike(s)Audi in the garage.

So much product placement going on in there 😉

If you’re thinking of trying a GPS jammer, don’t. It’ll possibly get you in trouble with the popo for an offence under the wireless telegraphy act.

A GPS jammer would only work if you never switched it off

Yeah it’d be a terrible idea.

Would mess up everyone’s Strava times when it was sat in the trail centre car park.

These are know to be used by thieves. MX bikes here, but I’ve know one on a mates Ducati that he found before he got home. Whether they have been used to mtb theft is not strictly relevant, it’s just a good reminder to be vigilant and take no chances with your bikes.

As for folk taking about advertising your bikes on the roof, we’ve all heard about the guy robbed at knife point on the M6 I’m sure.

Nope…

If they need a receiver to see where their magnetic sender has gone, can you get a general GPS receiver to see if a tracker is sending a trace from your car? Can a phone app do that? If you find there’s one on the car, I guess wouldn’t then be hard to find. Or a potential chance to deliver the tracker to the police station and see if they turn up to collect it?

Considering that bike thieves walked into a race field and lifted loads of bikes from the UKGE race and it’s been done from DH races in the past there are a lot of soft targets without even going near to peoples houses. But also not much surprises me in terms of the lengths that thieves are going to. Could be a bit of truth from the MX side and a bit of Facebook Read this single occurrence that is probably just about true and is extrapolated and call it a crime wave.

I’d imagine the gps tracker would also give away when you are in and not in. IE they’d be able to track when you went to work and when you’d be expected back.

There are 2g/3g detectors on ebay but they’re quite expensive – £300+.

Could you get a raspberry pi, and one of those wideband TV receivers (about £10) with the software-defined radio stack and get it to tune to the 2g/3g band?

https://www.adafruit.com/products/1497

(I’d try it out as I’ve got the receiver but I’ve misplaced my RPI).

lerk – Member
I’m Not going to post on here, but it’s very easy and considerably cheaper…

I was only asking because if this uses official channels then surely there would be records of the search on the car taking place which leaves a paper trail.

I await the pics of people scanning their cars before heading home 🙂

Simpler way of checking..

those rtl sdr dongle things certainly do work on an RPi, and kalibrate is the first app to install, which basically scans for GSM, finds the frequencies in use, and tells you how mistuned the dongle is (so you can then add in the offset to other scanning/receiving apps).
problem is… there’s a phone in every single pocket at a trail center carpark, and the GSM band isn’t really a band, but a collection of bands all over the place.
so scanning for foreign devices might be more effort than it’s worth.

spose you could try scanning for phone serial numbers while driving.

be easier to just not go to a trail centre.

it’s probably safer to stay at home anyway, lots of things out there can get you

Bit childish but this comment made me chuckle:

I would chuck it in micheal barrymores swimmimg pool!!!!

I would say the tracker is much eaiser than finding addresses any other way and re-usable and no trace if you use PAYG and cash bought top-ups. Worrying.

I went reading about the device after seeing the story.

Admittedly, I assumed mountainbikes as it was posted in UKGE, but these look great for organised thieves.

The specific box is relatively expensive actual security kit, and properly weatherproof. It can also stay live for 2mo – a year on one battery charge. It does basically nothing til someone calls it from a mobile. Then it polls location and texts back longitude, latitude and speed in a format that apparently will launch Google maps if you receive it on a smart phone. It’s a locator not a tracker. It does have a few other abilities if configured but they’d be useful for keeping stuff where you put it not finding someone else’s.

Quite agree that these now would be a better idea than tailing someone. As posted, the thieves could lurk in sight of a car park at Trail centre, note the vehicles with more interesting bikes, tag the vehicles once riders riding, then do something else for the rest of the day. Once they’ve got all the locations sussed, they can hit the houses at will. With several tags to use at once it’s far more efficient than individually following vehicles. It also as suggested opens up options of finding people’s vans while on a riding holiday, when vehicles don’t live at registered address etc. Plus you don’t leave search metadata for looking up registration details.

I imagine it’s only a real worry to people with much newer nicer bikes than mine, but I certainly wouldn’t discount these type of geolocators. I’d certainly be interested in them if I was a thief.

Put it on another vehicle. Like a police car! 😆