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After Car2Go eased its background checks, 75 vehicles were stolen in one day

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Re: After Car2Go eased its background checks, 75 vehicles were stolen in one day

#41
Shame we can’t have nice things. Car2Go operates in my city, and it’s a remarkably convenient way to get around (even moreso given that Uber/Lyft are still banned by the city council - thanks to the taxi lobby...). They’re competing with a local car-share company for market share so their rates are very low.

I do wonder what their rates of theft are here...

Re: After Car2Go eased its background checks, 75 vehicles were stolen in one day

#42

>its GPS trackers can’t be physically disabled That's just a silly statement. Anything can be physically disabled; the question is how difficult and time-consuming disabling it is. Maybe it's encased in a steel block in the engine compartment in series with vital wiring connections but even then some work with an angle-grinder and a soldering iron could get around it given a couple of hours.

Gps trackers cant penetrate a thick lead shield. Simply shield the electronics from being able to emit. Then deal with it at a later point

Illicit signal jammers that plug into the 12v car socket seem readily available if you know where to look, no modifications necessary.

[not condoning their use]

Re: After Car2Go eased its background checks, 75 vehicles were stolen in one day

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gps trackers cant penetrate a thick lead shield. Simply shield the electronics from being able to emit. Then deal with it at a later point

You don't even need lead - just use metal (iron, steel, aluminum - anything highly conductive). Hell, I haven't tried, but I bet a small amount of aluminum foil (much less than you'd get on a single roll for a few dollars) would work. You just need a faraday cage, and GPS signals are already fairly weak.

> and GPS signals are already fairly weak

You could try stopping the GPS signal from getting in, but you could also stop the (likely) GSM signal from getting out.

Re: After Car2Go eased its background checks, 75 vehicles were stolen in one day

#44
post #15
post #9

If there’s one thing enterprising thieves know how to do, it’s ruining things for honest people and why we can’t have good things. You really have to think like a thief when you want to serve the public because the public provides a cover to the crook and if you let your guard down it’ll bite you in this day and age.

I think it's also due to having a population that has nothing to lose.

FWIW, there has never been an easier time to be alive. When you frame things like that, it really drives home how utterly unfit for modern life a person has to be to justify a life of crime in 2019. Life is always a struggle, but we’re not exactly living in a Dickens novel.

Re: After Car2Go eased its background checks, 75 vehicles were stolen in one day

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any citations for what seems like an extreme claim in your second paragraph?

The crime statistics in the neighborhoods should suffice. One thing I periodically see on HN is how companies are discriminating against (group here) because they aren't operating in high-crime neighborhoods. Obviously, a company maximizing revenues and minimizing liabilities will avoid such areas. So will most individuals delivering to them that don't want to get robbed (most likely), raped, or killed. They're more…

Homelessness might evaporate over night if just a small fraction of home dwellers opened their doors to those in need; but there's good reason why doing so is prohibitively untenable, and the solutions are more complicated than simply making a bed or couch available.

I don't think it's fair to claim that that who don't volunteer are virtue signaling slacktivists; they may simply believe the solutions must come from larger institutions than individual action.

Re: After Car2Go eased its background checks, 75 vehicles were stolen in one day

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit scores? This is a fairly widely known fact that honestly shouldn’t need citations. There’s a reason banks secure credit cards from people with no credit history. There’s a reason insurance in Florida is different than the rest of the U.S. etc

Credit scores measure behavior, not your attributes. The issue here was fraud. My credit score doesn’t help you assess risk if someone else is impersonating me.

They also don't necessarily correlate correctly with behavior. If you actively avoid debt, for instance, you are essentially penalized with regard to credit score.

Re: After Car2Go eased its background checks, 75 vehicles were stolen in one day

#48
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve thought about this a bit recently and I wonder how much it’s actually “poor people” who are the target of this prejudice and “brown people” just get tarred with that brush. Nobody thinks rich brown people are automatically criminals.

Nobody thinks rich brown people are automatically criminals. Really? You’ve never heard of racial profiling? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/w... https://newsone.com/3812066/black-doctor-racial-profiling-at...

The parent's theory would conclude that the police were using race as a proxy for being rich or poor, not as an end in itself. I guess you could test it by putting everybody's credit score on their license plate. Yikes, what a nightmare.

Re: After Car2Go eased its background checks, 75 vehicles were stolen in one day

#49

This is interesting because I always thought these "background checks" were just a formality. Like something needed for their insurance or to weed out a few extreme individuals (like those with multiple-DUIs or a heavy history of wrecks on their record). But the fact that they can ease up on background checks and see an immediate large bulk of car thefts is damning evidence that the background checks were truly havin…

The "background checks" were probably excluding a lot of low-hanging fruit, like attempts at creating accounts in fake names with stolen credit card details.

Re: After Car2Go eased its background checks, 75 vehicles were stolen in one day

#50
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's also due to having a population that has nothing to lose.

FWIW, there has never been an easier time to be alive. When you frame things like that, it really drives home how utterly unfit for modern life a person has to be to justify a life of crime in 2019. Life is always a struggle, but we’re not exactly living in a Dickens novel.

I'm quite sure the Aristocrats, Nobles, Dukes of the Victorian era said the exact same things (and the monarchs before them)
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