alright guys, i have just been told by a friend of mine about a friend of his family.

she left her yellow zetec s (think its 55 reg) in town today and locked it with the key. like we all do, press the button and walk away assuming our cars are safe.
any way she returned to it after shopping to find that it had been unlocked and the car had been turned over.
the local ford dealer - TC Harrison, said it had been 'scanned' when she locked it and they are getting a lot of cars coming in to be re programmed.
the police found no prints any where saying who ever did it had gloves on (pretty standard thief rule of thumb)


is this still possible in this day and age? can these scum bags really do this? if they can i am quite concerned about my ST's safety.

Hm not heard of the problem personally, but I would think in this day and age more than ever, the technology available makes it simple enough for someone that knows what they're doing. That sucks big time though for that person and anyone else it may happen to.

i would like to think she forgot to lock it. this happened in day light in a big busy car park.
so if any of you are going shopping in burton on trent this week end.........watch out

Yeah it is really bad... if they 'scanned' it though, I doubt anyone would look twice at someone in a car if the window wasn't broken or door bent or something!

Just like that scene out of gone in 60 seconds then. I guess the rule of thumb is dont leave anything of value in your car, maybe the car had been watched & they knew what was inside? They wont be able to start the engine i presume (otherwise the car would have been knicked) so I cant see them picking random cars, it would be too risky. I always try to park my car close to the road or entrance to a car park just to add a bit more risk for any would-be criminal.

Just a thought, wouldnt locking it manualy (key in lock) eliminate this threat??

If you turn it to open for a second then back round to lock this activates the double locking feature just like double pressing lock on the key. Useful to keep in mind if you suspect anything fishy or the remote locking doesnt work.

My friend Simon Hurr the head of security at Ford did a wee piece about this which was shown on Discovery Channel recently

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12joSKf2fas

Maybe the last bit with the doorbell remote was what happened?

that was intersting especially the door bell. seem like they can use the same wave as ur car key. I know over here few years ago with a tv remote controle u were able to open and close a car and even in some town u were able to change the red light to green light but they never tell which compagny was it

so basicly its far more likey that the remote was jammed than scanned so the rule there must be make sure u have seen the indicators flash.

I did have a problem at home a few months back where the , the clio we have and my bike alarm all would only work on the drive if u went right up to them. It was not long after my neigbour put in a wirless house alarm so think it must have been jaming the radio signals.

Also my Clifford alarm wipes out my Wifi when set if I use channel 11 on it.

Its all to do with too much going on in a small bandwidth and its got to be set to get worse as we go more and more wireless!