Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 241 posts

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

#61

Post by mieseratte »

taneq wrote: post #56
whatshisface wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Precisely. I suspect the chain of inference is much more like "black -> poor -> bad" than directly "black -> bad". I mean, neither is fair but understanding the process is crucial to fixing it.

Anecdotally I’ve had the inverse, pulled over in a lower-income black neighborhood because a patrolling officer thought I must’ve been there to buy drugs.

I do wonder how often that type of thing happens, but we simply don’t hear much of it because it isn’t widely considered as bad.

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

#62

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

barbecue_sauce wrote: post #47
Spooky23 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s a feature, not a bug, the most profitable people are the ones that go into debt, never miss payments but also never pay it off.

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

#63

Post by jws »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #42
cobookman wrote: post #22

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

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]

I hope the car rental companies augment their trackers to use cellular tower and WiFi access points for location. Then when they detect a jammer they can notify both the owners and the FCC.

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

#65

Post by fencepost »

How is this "sharing?" This seems like app-based short term rentals little different from what I could get from Avis and the like.

My initial thought was that this was allowing individuals to rent out their cars and my reaction was a hard 'oh hell no.' What's the term from the various "my expensive camera /lens was stolen" stories? Voluntary parting? Pretty sure that would apply to your nice car as well.

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

#66

Post by notatoad »

fencepost wrote: post #65

How is this "sharing?" This seems like app-based short term rentals little different from what I could get from Avis and the like. My initial thought was that this was allowing individuals to rent out their cars and my reaction was a hard 'oh hell no.' What's the term from the various "my expensive camera /lens was stolen" stories? Voluntary parting? Pretty sure that would apply to your nice car as well.

It's not sharing, but the term sort of makes sense because they're competing with the actual sharing companies like uber more than they're competing with rental companies.

You can rent a car2go for an hour to do a big grocery run, that's not economical or practical with avis.

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

#67

Post by pergadad »

hooande wrote: post #54
supernova87a wrote: post #12

Never underestimate how much cleverer than you people will be when it comes to money. They spend their full time on figuring out how to use the system in ways you didn't expect, whereas you don't even spend full time on getting the things to work the way you barely took the time to think they would. Secondly, take away the lesson that there's a reason that banks/stores/merchants don't lower their standards and go int…

Given the scale, I would suspect a ring of professional criminals more than people with low credit scores from "bad neighborhoods". This is Hacker News, after all. This is a system and someone hacked it. "In several cases, hackers with lists of email addresses and passwords have written scripts to locate car-sharing accounts using those credentials. Once they find the accounts, they sign out cars and disable their GP…

Sound like this was certainly an organised group and had strong local presence. But could as well be a daring youth club rather than organised crime.

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

#68

Post by darkpuma »

mieseratte wrote: post #61
taneq wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. I suspect the chain of inference is much more like "black -> poor -> bad" than directly "black -> bad". I mean, neither is fair but understanding the process is crucial to fixing it.

Anecdotally I’ve had the inverse, pulled over in a lower-income black neighborhood because a patrolling officer thought I must’ve been there to buy drugs. I do wonder how often that type of thing happens, but we simply don’t hear much of it because it isn’t widely considered as bad.

I had that happen to me when I was a student living in west philly, also once in Kensington and once in Camden. The later two are/were particularly notorious, though my neighborhood in west philly wasn't very nice either.

I've heard mixed reports of cops in Camden, but the cops I've encountered in Philly all seemed genuinely concerned with protecting the law abiding residents from crime and are pretty good at getting to know the people living in a neighborhood. After we met the first time, the cop in west philly who cautioned me against the neighborhood remembered me for the remaining years I lived here and on one occasion when I was particularly careless probably saved my ass.

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

#70

Post by [deleted] »

hooande wrote: post #54
supernova87a wrote: post #12

Never underestimate how much cleverer than you people will be when it comes to money. They spend their full time on figuring out how to use the system in ways you didn't expect, whereas you don't even spend full time on getting the things to work the way you barely took the time to think they would. Secondly, take away the lesson that there's a reason that banks/stores/merchants don't lower their standards and go int…

Given the scale, I would suspect a ring of professional criminals more than people with low credit scores from "bad neighborhoods". This is Hacker News, after all. This is a system and someone hacked it. "In several cases, hackers with lists of email addresses and passwords have written scripts to locate car-sharing accounts using those credentials. Once they find the accounts, they sign out cars and disable their GP…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN