Car Theft from Boot

Shawz · 17 February 2005 at 1:53AM

a friend has had his car broken into tonight and had his laptop and some other stuff stolen. It was all locked in the boot out of sight but I have been told that the thieves now have handheld electronic scanners which can be used from a moving car and can detect laptops, ipaqs, ipods etc in a car boot so that they know what car to break into.

Does anyone know anything about these at all ??

Glad · 17 February 2005 at 10:21AM

I'm moving this to the warnings board to make others aware of it

Shawz · 17 February 2005 at 1:16PM

ok, thanks Glad

VH · 17 February 2005 at 1:19PM

Sounds like an Old Wive's Tale to me.

How can you electronically detect a laptop, IPod, etc. if it's turned off?

Shawz · 17 February 2005 at 1:33PM

I did think it a bit strange but as it was from a policeman I thought it may have some truth behind it.

The only thing I can think that they all have in common, is batteries. Is it possible to detect these

VH · 17 February 2005 at 1:37PM

Not that I'm aware of. Even if you could how would you differentiate between a laptop battery and a car battery? I certainly know of no way to detect a laptop. If it was turned on and had wireless capability it might be possible but even then it wouldn't be easy.

It certainly sounds like a scare story to me. Perhaps it was started by a Policeman to encourage people not to leave things in their boots?

Browntoa · 17 February 2005 at 1:37PM

you would only be able to detect them if they were on....can't believe that the are detectable when turned off !!

I would say it was more likely that these days there is a 99% chance that if you have anything valuable theses days you stuff it in the boot so any thief would just jemmy that open to make sure

VH · 17 February 2005 at 1:41PM

I agree, most car thieves are just thugs with crowbars..

scheming_gypsy · 18 February 2005 at 7:09PM

heard about it before and don't think it's an old wives tail. We have few people working at our place who work away from home alot and all laptop users, whenever they're away they stay in Travel Inns and a few have had the same happen to them, and not just them. I think on once occasion 6 cars were done and all had laptops in the boots.

The question is though... what the eff are you doing leaving it in the boot in the first place?

Shawz · 18 February 2005 at 7:34PM

scheming_gypsy wrote:

heard about it before and don't think it's an old wives tail. We have few people working at our place who work away from home alot and all laptop users, whenever they're away they stay in Travel Inns and a few have had the same happen to them, and not just them. I think on once occasion 6 cars were done and all had laptops in the boots.

The question is though... what the eff are you doing leaving it in the boot in the first place?

Fair point SG but my mate didn't have anywhere more secure to store it. I've always thought that if things were stored in the boot out of site they would be fine. How wrong I was.
SG where did you hear about it? I've done a search on the web for any info but can't find anything. I even tried Ebay but no luck.
If these thing do exist, there must be some way of blocking the signal.

russ_c · 18 February 2005 at 8:12PM

just sounds like another one of those urban myths to me

Car Theft from Boot

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