Lock Your Car Manually, not With Wireless Remote-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
This is a warning that crooks can get the code to the wireless locking system on your car. The email claims it happened to someone in Canada. While stopped at a roadside park, a man’s locked car was easily accessed by someone who stole his cell phone, laptop, GPS, briefcase, and more. The police allegedly said that robbers were using a device that would clone the security code on the wireless remote that is used for locking and unlocking the car.
The Truth:
TruthOrFiction.com has not found any documented case of a car being broken into by thieves using an electronic cloning device to duplicate the code of a wireless remote.
This eRumor, which began circulating in July, 2008, does not include any information about when, where, and to whom this event occurred.
The experts we consulted says that at the present time, such a criminal event could not happen with most cars.
Virtually all of the cars that unlock with remote keyless devices are protected by an encryption system called Keelog, which scrambles the wireless transmissions so nobody could monitor and clone them.
According to MSNBC blogger Bob Sullivan, there is a group of researchers in Israel and Belgium who claim to have discovered a way to figure out the coding of a wireless locking system, but it’s fairly time consuming and is not being used by thieves.
This eRumor may have been sparked by the memory of some of the original keyless systems first introduced in the 1980s. They were simpler and it was easier for a hacker to detect the wireless code.
Updated July 28, 2008