[asinrute]

There has been a lot of talk in the press and on TV in the UK about Cars, especially Range Rovers, BWWs and Audis, being stolen by people being able to program the keyless fobs and gain access to the car and drive it away, to the extent that some people in London were finding it hard to get insurance unless they had underground parking. On TV they specifically mentioned X5s. Does anyone know if this applies to X3s as well

[bounderboy]

This interests me too.. I do wonder if more of Daily Mail agenda - but definitely would be awful to have a loaded insurance for a weakness in the system..

[Smithy2014]

Some thieves can intercept the signal your remote sends to the car when you lock / unlock it. This is much easier for them when you use the remote some distance away from the vehicle - much harder when you use your remote when you are right by your car!

I don't have this issue as I have comfort access - can only get in if the fob is within a foot or so of the vehicle!

[WatchThis!]

Originally Posted by Smithy2014

Some thieves can intercept the signal your remote sends to the car when you lock / unlock it. This is much easier for them when you use the remote some distance away from the vehicle - much harder when you use your remote when you are right by your car!

I don't have this issue as I have comfort access - can only get in if the fob is within a foot or so of the vehicle!

This type of approach only works if the lock signal is jammed and the owner doesn't notice that their car didn't lock. Another way would be to capture and decode the unlock transmission and then use a trial and error method (which is very rapid) to guess the next unlock combination - which might take weeks.

Comfort unlocking is more secure as it requires interaction with the car for each attempt.

If your car alarm doesn't provide full internal coverage then it can be broken in to. BMW's were susceptible to this a few years back allowing entry to the car and the data port to be hooked up - all without the alarm being activated. Once hooked up a new key could then be added to the list of keys that operate the car, and the car 'opened' and then started.

Personally, I'd just lift the car onto a low loader, cover the plates with gaffer tape and drive off....