Is Your Vehicle Safe From Relay Theft?

FLR Security regularly recovers stolen vehicles and spots potential relay theft before they even take place.

With 2-8 vehicle thefts every day, our in-house Monitoring Station (ARC) recovers 70% of stolen vehicles in the first 12 hours and then boasts a massive recovery rate of 90% within the following 48 hours, despite the additional challenge of police resources being stretched to their limits and vehicle crime on the rise.

Almost all thefts surrounding cars, plant machinery and caravans occur between 10pm and 5am with most car owners reporting no noise, no signs of broken glass from the break in and no witnesses. In situations like this, it is due to something known as relay theft which take advantage of modern cars “always on” key feature.

Relay-Theft
Illustration courtesy of admiral.com

Thieves are capitalising on the technology car manufacturers are promoting and consumers have grown to love…

The sophisticated technology that can break into your car silently, can be purchased online for as little as £100 and has the ability to hack into your car’s computer in less than a minute putting a huge 96% of motorists at risk. According to Tracker:

Criminals are not only accessing cars by using key-less fobs, they can gain access via anything that uses the internet like route planning maps, music and travel info.

How does a relay attack work?

A relay attack needs two people working together to be successful; one person near the house to pick up the key fob signal (although some advanced devices have a range of over 100 metres) and the other person near the targeted vehicle.

It’s as simple as that. Once this information is relayed, they are in your car and driving away.

That is why our ARC is manned 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year by our highly trained staff and live alert systems working with the police to monitor, track and recover your vehicle should the worse happen.