How To Lock Your Car

[Mike Gleason]

Hi Alex, This was sent to me by a friend and I was wondering if this bit of information has any validity? 

How to Lock Your Car and Why....

I locked my car --- as I walked away I heard my car door unlock I went back and locked my car again three times. I looked around and there were two guys sitting in a car in the fire lane next to the store. When I looked straight at them they did not unlock my car again
How to lock your car safely -
While traveling, my son stopped at a roadside park. He came out to his car less than 4-5 minutes later and found someone had gotten into his car, and stolen his cell phone, laptop computer, GPS navigator briefcase.....you name it..

He called the police and since there were no signs of his car being broken into - the police told him that there is a device that robbers are using now to clone your security code when you lock your doors on your car using your key-chain locking device..

They sit a distance away and watch for their next victim. They know you are going inside of the store, restaurant, or bathroom and have a few minutes to steal and run. The police officer said to manually lock your car door-by hitting the lock button inside the car, that way if there is someone sitting in a parking lot watching for their next victim it will not be you.

When you hit the lock button on your car upon exiting...it does not send the security code, but if you walk away and use the door lock on your key chain - it sends the code through the airwaves where it can be stolen. Something totally new to us...and real.

Be aware of this and please pass this note on...look how many times we all lock our doors with our remote...just to be sure we remembered to lock them....and bingo someone has our code...and whatever was in the car....can be stolen.

[RichardInFlorida]

A quick trip to snopes.com revealed this information:

http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/lockcode.asp

In a nutshell, there are a wide range of e-mails floating around out there with 1/2 truths to out-and-out lies.  It would appear this one is mostly false.

It seems that since the mid-90's remote locking transmitters use rolling security codes, meaning that each time you use it, a new code is set.  So unless you knew what code the transmitter would use the NEXT time, cloning the current signal is useless.  The snopes article does a better job of explaining it.

Stay safe,

Richard