Lessons learnt and my advice after stolen car

[Agreeable Slick]

Had a break in a few years back now. They were after the car as well, fortunately the keys were upstairs and they didn't venture up there.

Remedial work;

Sash Jammers on all doors, top and bottom. Can pick up multipacks off amazon for cheap and they are good.
Ultion door locks all around.
Pro-secure door handles - Cast bodies and 2 star rating - https://www.double-glazing-parts-spares.co.uk/prosecure-door-handle
Ring alarm as mentioned with the subscription.

As daft as it sounds, one Officer that came round after the event said if you do confront them and it comes to blows, aim for the face and nose in particular, it would give DNA.... I think most in that situation would not have the capacity to think this way in the moment, but maybe valid for those who are able to think clearly.

[simonwhite2000]

Lots of praise for the ring alarm - is it that good? Isnt it a wifi alarm which means it can be hacked whereas a traditional wired is more secure?

in 2017 we had a then 6 month old S5 stolen and a new Polo GTI taken from the drive whilst we were out at a wedding. They were caught on a neighbours dashcam being driven away 25 mins after we left so someone had been tipped off for sure.

I did contemplate never having a fancy car again but soon replaced it with another S5.

I think security is a combination of solutions rather than one miracle. We have CCTV, security lights, steering wheel locks, Ghost immobilisers on both cars and a substantial driveway post. I think it's just about making it look more hard work than someone elses car on your estate.

[Carl_45]

That’s exactly my opinion too about the combination. I also fully agree, it sounds horrible, but, if your car is hard work, they’ll take an easier target.

I think the ring is good, you’re right about hacking I suppose, but it’s got two factor authentication to sign in and if someone wants to go to the extremes of hacking an alarm to take a car, they’ll find away no matter what is in place.

[Gjm]

Has anybody looked at the low-cost trackers available?

The one I have seen was a company called TruTrak, saw it advertised in WhatCar? magazine. They do a self install option that just connects to the battery, I know a bit of an obvious place, but depending on your skills or a friendly auto-electrician, it could go anywhere there is a Live and ground feed.

These kind of services don't give you the fully featured, managed tracker experience, but then they are cheaper. They are a step up from using an Apple AirTag. There is a small monthly charge, as it is using a SIM card to report back the GPS details.

I've been doing a bit of reading up on them, and I think they are the same type of devices that insurance companies are using as Black Box devices when they monitor cars/drivers and adjust your premium accordingly.

[phope]

After hearing that a couple of cars were stolen overnight in my district after breaking & entering specifically for car keys for relatively mundane models, I have modified a couple of AirTags for use with my cars

Removed the internal speaker, as per the instructions here https://mashtips.com/remove-airtag-speaker/ and have placed them securely in a relatively unusual place in each car - I tried them first in the location with the speaker enabled, and the beep was still quite audible, so made sense to mute them physically.

Result is that I can still connect to each AirTag and track, but there is no longer any internal speaker to beep & ping to alert others. Even if it were to give a few hours of tracking data to pass to police to confirm locations, it may help

[Foxy367]

I thought the air tags told any Iphones not attached to it that it was there anyway? As long as the couldn't hear the pinging they might rip the car apart to try and find it?

I like the idea though

[phope]

They do, but it takes several hours for an unknown AirTag to flag up as being with you and for an alert to be put on your screen- at least if a thief is preoccupied with disabling the tracking functions of infotainment system or removing other security measures, the chances are that this could still be active for a small while anyway

[Gjm]

For AirTag tracking the AirTags needs to be in close proximity of an iPhone, so the thief/thieves will need to have iPhones, they would also need to have not disabled the Find My functionality, as it requires that on the phone to connect to and broadcast it's location.

Depending on where they go or stash the car, it may pick up passer-by phones, so you may get a ping from that.

Not knowing the mindset of thieves I'm working on assumptions of two types, those that park it in plain site and leave it for a few days before moving it on, so you may pick up on those. But the types that are more organised with premises or shipping containers in the middle of nowhere would be harder to catch with AirTags.

I think the hardened criminal gangs has ways and means around all this stuff, be it a £40-£400 tracker or a simple AirTag, but they may just be a deterrent for opportunist thieves.

[fredgroves]

This might be a better bet than airtags...

https://www.bennetts.co.uk/bikesocial/reviews/products/security/trackers/monimoto-7-tracker

[Gjm]

This might be a better bet than airtags...

https://www.bennetts.co.uk/bikesocial/reviews/products/security/trackers/monimoto-7-tracker

Similar to the service I mentioned about with TruTrak (https://www.trutrak.co.uk/product-page/trutrak-fmt100-payg), also available by a company called DrivePro (https://www.drivepro.io/Products/SelfInstallGpsTracker?upc=750122520589)

They all seem to use devices from a company called Teltonika, the easy plug in model is called FMT100 and the more advanced one is FMB920. All these companies then wrap their own services around it for a monthly fee. The advantage of these device is they are hard-wired in, so never have to worry about batteries going flat.