Keyless Entry?

[tt82]

Originally Posted by apersson850

People commit crimes for five bucks (regardless of currency).

One of the main security problems with keyless entry is the development of range extenders. So when your car is in your back yard, and the key in your jacket's pocket inside the door, you can let one man stand outside the door with a transceiver, and the other man outside the car with the other transceiver. These devices will pick up the key's signal, transfer it to the car and the car will think the key is nearby and unlock the door. Next you enter the car and start it, still with the transceiver. Now you can run as long as you don't stop the engine. So the villain drives away, perhaps across a border to another country, where he has the equipment to reprogram the car to a new set of keys.

Voila, you have a stolen car with no break-in marks, running with new keys.

Another trick is to follow the driver, after he parked outside the shopping mall, with the transceiver, and do the same procedure. When you accomplish has started the car, you leave the owner and off you go.

When at home, store your keys in a metallic box. That reduces the range dramatically, enough to not make this kind of theft possible. When out and about, well, it's difficult if it's crowded to make sure nobody is trying this trick on you.

A topic was posted on these transceivers a few weeks ago and as an owner of a Keyless model, I would genuinely like to learn more about it. Specifically how close these transcievers have to be to the car/key in order to work.

As Tatsfield has said though, thieves generally want to get the maximum gain for the minimum work, not through laziness but also rousing suspicions and increasing the risks of being caught. The Volvo system is actually pretty identifiable from outside the car but I believe other manufacturers have more discreet systems. How is a car thief suppose to know which model has keyless and which doesn't before they start standing at various places around a house in order to detect a signal from a key?

My own personal feeling is that Volvo's are not a model generally stolen because the don't have the same desirability. And regardless of country, all key coding with Volvo has to be done with VIDA which has a subscription to Volvo in Sweden, not just anybody can code a Volvo key. And for this reason, I'm not really concerned that my car is a likely target and the risk is low.

[CTCNetwork]

Hi,

Yes, and only BMW dealers can code BMW keys...

Des. . .

[apersson850]

On a Volvo like mine, it's easy to see that it has the keyless functionality. The external door handles are different.
As far as I've understood, you can steal the car in Sweden, then go to various countries south of here, preferably on the other side of what used to be the iron curtain. There you can get new keys coded for the car, no questions asked. Just pay...

If you go by bridge, you con't have to mess with the issue that on a ferry, they don't like you if you keep the engine running. Because you can drive with a car without the key, once you got it started, but you can't start again, as soon as you stopped the engine.

Escaping from the UK may be more difficult. The continent is isolated, there's fog on the Channel...

[Tatsfield]

Escaping from the UK may be more difficult.

And far less likely as UK cars are RHD and not particularly valid in the rest of Europe where they stand out like a sore thumb.