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I know security through obscurity is not really a security, but thieves have a limited time to action and they would drop the car if there are problems or are spooked.

How you can prevent a car theft?

Hardware:

- Kill switch - hide a switch somewhere to the battery/ignition

- Steering wheel or pedal lock - annoying for the daily use. Not much of a deterrent if someone has a pick or liquid nitrogen.

- Chain and a lock in your garage - the need to cut something would be too risky. Doesn't help in a public place.

- Replace ODB with a fake - stops the hacking

PsyOp:

Have a message displayed or an extra devices that would communicate (this is car is being track, please leave the vehicle, police unit is dispatched etc.)

Tracking:

Thieves know how to disable car alarms with GSP, but Airtags maybe hard to find.

6 comments

wrt PsyOp, I would have agreed with you until my car was recently stolen with an airtag and a custom camera system. The theives could care less about the custom cameras and simply snipped the cables. They had an iphone and I'm guessing once the iphone got pinged they were tracked they tossed the airtag. It doesn't seem like they care all that much about anything to be honest.

A hidden kill switch is probably the best idea since you actually need to find it which costs time.

fun fact, when I told the cops there was an air tag in there their first reaction was "what's that", and their second was "our investigators tell us it's not accurate enough to be actionable information." I recovered it myself and in some sense they were right, the airtag was kind of useless in finally recovering the vehicle.

This software [1] on something like this hardware [2] work with the Airtag ecosystem, and won't ping any warnings. Beware of the ones lacking the external timing components. The battery won't last as long using the internal oscillator.

[1] https://github.com/dakhnod/FakeTag

[2] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003144393539.html

A friend had an idea, I don't know if he had ever implemeted it. Take a square pillow. Stick about 100 needles in it. When leaving the car, position pillow on the driver seat so that needles' points are up, but of course all of them are still invisible / inside the pillow. Don't forget to move the pillow when you want to drive the car :)

Similar idea, also illegal, leave a half empty bottle of booze laced with poison in the boot.

Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

I hate to say it, but if the police don't start acting to deter these thefts then people will result to vigilante justice and booby traps, since it's the only thing they can do.

Booby traps are illegal.

Car thieves seldom report crimes to the police. I'd be more worried about the thief seeking violent revenge.

But when they do, the results can be hilarious!

https://www.autoblog.com/2022/04/06/man-rigs-flash-bang-to-s...

Exactly. Slashed tires and/or keyed paint. Hopefully they won't come back to exact bodily harm.

Kill switch on the fuel pump relay and a removable steering wheel. I'm actually using the ECU signal to fuel pump as my kill switch and I have my amplifier remote turn on the same circuit.

The stereo in the trunk is a big red herring because if you yank it out the car isn't going to crank pal.

Usually the fuse box is accessible right under the dashboard. Remove the ignition fuse and keep it in your wallet, and the car won't start, without any clear message about what's wrong (most of the time).

I know a local dealership that does this. They have a bowl full of fuses underneath their key lockbox. Pretty funny to see them need to put the fuse in just for a test drive.

I had an old fiat car where it had some unknown electrical problem that would run the some fuel pump thing all the time, even without key. So the solution my grandfather figured out what a kill switch under the dashboard for the fuel pump. Wouldn't start without flipping it.

I want this, but on my electric car. Fuses aren't usually so accessible. I made a switch like this on my next (gas) car, but I could get the manuals and find the spot in the wiring diagram. I have no idea how to do this for a tesla. I don't think the fuses are so accessible in evs.

A hidden switch on the wire behind that fuse would be a lot more ergonomic, a thief would just replace the ignition fuse with any other in the panel, he doesn't need the radio to be on :)

sadly my Mercedes CLA has in the engine compartment. Probably it's better to swap it with a fake/damaged one.

> Chain and a lock in your garage

I've seen someone protect a Ferrari F40 in his garage by having a gigantic door security "trunk" on his garage door. Literally the size of a tree trunk.

Stealing the car required getting inside the garage, which was only accessible through a regular but armored door.

The owner's idea was that you couldn't use another car to destroy the garage's door as there was this huge metal "trunk" taking all the width of the garage, going through huge holes in concrete.

So you'd first need to open the armored door, then slide that gigantic metallic trunk. That trunk was so heavy is was on little wheels.

Just drive a stick shift.

This mostly works.

in my country most cars are stick shift ;)