Expensive cars easy to steal...

Gloomendoom

takman wrote: »

This is just an urban myth that people keep spouting when talking about the negatives of contactless cards. If a thief tried to take unauthorised payments like this it would soon lead to them being caught when multiple people report the transactions as unauthorised. You cannot take card payments anonymously.

In a test report I saw, single cards could be read but multiple cards held together, as in a wallet, were not.

Nilrem

iltisman wrote: »

I wonder if the crooks will adapt this technology to use contactless credit cards remotely.

Contactless cards are extremely short range technology as the transmitter in the card requires power from the card reader (induction powered - which suffers from the inverse square law, iirc every time the distance doubles the power needed goes up 4 times, so 25mm is doable, 50mm is pushing it, 100mm is not going to work depending on system).

You'll notice it if you try to use your contactless card on the wrong side of a reader in relation to the internal antenna (the cards try to allow for it by having a larger antenna which allows for pretty much the whole of the card to be readable as long as part of it near the readers one)

Robby1988

Always thought this keyless entry stuff is a load of nonsense. A totally unnecessary gimmick.

To this day I have never uttered even a tutt of dismay for the effort involved in pressing a button on my keyfob and then inserting the key. It's really not that big a deal.

To think, buying a luxury car for five/six figures in 2017 and then having to buy a steering wheel lock like my Grandad had on his Rover in the 80s

No doubt the big German brands will be along soon with their 'official' key pouches.

AnotherJoe

DoaM wrote: »

I agree. They need to be as close as possible because:

1. As I recall, signal strength degrades by the square of distance (double the distance, 4 times less signal strength)
2. Building materials also impede the signal path

Therefore they stand at the window and place the search device on/very close to the window and then repeat the signal to a device near the car.

From memory, it’s because you need something very close to the car for the car to recognise the proximity of the fob. And so if you don’t have a relay system, you are much more restricted in the distance of the fob.

On the technical paper I read, which dated from about 2012 so this problem has been known about for a long time but brushed under the carpet by manufacturers, their equipment was powerful enough that front or back of the house made no difference, but the car being another say 10 - 20 metres made a difference If you think about it thats doubling or trebling the distance from front of house to back), whilst having a relay system effectively means that the distance is pretty much unlimited, you could target a car parked in the same street for example rather than just ones parked really close to the house. If you only had one device, you’d need a massively powerful transmitter and more importantly an ultra sensitive receiver to pick up the far distant fob. Once your receiver is good enough to receive the fob signal from the back of a house you don’t need to worry about the additional distance between fob receiver and car.

facade

So if we can hype up enough panic, will the price of second-hand keyless cars plummet? :eek:

I could easily drop the fob into the biscuit tin when I come into the house if it meant I could drive a decent car for pocket money prices.;)

More publicity!!!! :D:D