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NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

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Re: NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

#121

Post by rootusrootus »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #28

How is car theft in 2023 still a problem? What happens to a stolen car? It doesn't seem feasible or realistic to try to sell it for parts (where are you going to store all these cars before/after parting them out), and there's no way you can just sell the car and expect it not to get flagged. WTF is going on?

On the contrary, pulling apart a car and selling it for parts is frequently worth more than the car itself on the used market. It's especially profitable when you've stolen the car. The hardest part is probably getting rid of the parts of the shell that have VINs stamped into them.

Re: NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

#122

Post by inconceivable »

Animats wrote: post #112

LoJack used to be the go-to company for this. No more. Classic LoJack had good privacy. It's a box hidden somewhere in the car, with a connection to vehicle power. It has a transmitter, but normally doesn't transmit. If your car is stolen, you report this to the police, which report it to LoJack. That broadcasts an ID over a subcarrier of some local FM broadcast station. The receiver in the Lojack unit listens for th…

do you know if the legacy system is still in use?

my first 'nice' car had lojack installed in it. i remember it was about $200, and that's all, but this was 10+ years ago. i wonder if it's still out there...

Re: NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

#123

Post by taffronaut »

Swizec wrote: post #109
version_five wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that stupidity aside, how are AirTags actually supposed to help, even if we all had an iPhone and were happy to live under apple's benevolent rule? Most cars have a gps tracker now anyway. Mine was stolen last year, during the night. I was told it would have been put into a shipping container within an hour, where it wouldn't be accessible to radio waves anyway. Maybe they work for casual joyriding. At least wher…

> At least where I am, most car theft is organized crime shipping them overseas. Gimmicks like airtags will do nothing. I remember hearing stories as a kid in Slovenia that if your is stolen, you'll never get it back because it gets chopped into pieces within hours – before you even realize it's gone – and the parts make it to Bosnia/Albania/Serbia by next day. In the early 00's there was even a show on Discovery Cha…

"Chop Shop" was a follow up to the series "Bangla Bangers" [1]. It was more like a variant of Scrapheap Challenge and nothing to do with organized crime around stolen cars in the UK.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangla_Bangers

Re: NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

#124

Post by HDThoreaun »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #83
zzzeek wrote: post #11

who here can already see clearly the NYPD officer's completely blank stare when you show them exactly where the car thief took your car. "did you see them do it? otherwise it's not our problem"

> did you see them do it? otherwise it's not our problem If we're trading anecdotes, I had two laptops lifted from my apartment. The NYPD's detectives followed up with the building for footage, identified a suspect, followed up with the resident they were seen with, got the suspect's Instagram and got an arrest warrant. That resulted in them nabbing the guy when he was ticketed for jumping a subway turnstile.

I actually know multiple people who were robbed and NYPD caught them when they used the victims metro card. Wild that thieves haven't realized that the cards can be tracked and the stations are under surveillance, but maybe that's why they turned to crime.

Re: NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

#125

Post by jcrawfordor »

Animats wrote: post #112

LoJack used to be the go-to company for this. No more. Classic LoJack had good privacy. It's a box hidden somewhere in the car, with a connection to vehicle power. It has a transmitter, but normally doesn't transmit. If your car is stolen, you report this to the police, which report it to LoJack. That broadcasts an ID over a subcarrier of some local FM broadcast station. The receiver in the Lojack unit listens for th…

Today you see four antennas on police cars for digital diversity reception, originally desirable for minimizing multipath issues but today just about required for P25 "phase II" operation of multiple repeaters on the same channel. These are usually 900MHz radios, one of the factors in the decline of traditional Lojack was many police departments shifting to 900MHz for P25 and no longer equipping all vehicles with VHF radios. Depending on the department, vehicles may not have any radio capable of receiving Lojack transponders. Whether or not they're programmed for it is also a question.

When direction finding was used Doppler DF based on multiple antennas was rare due to the high cost of the electronics package, which also consumed a lot of trunk space. Most police departments did it the old fashioned way with a handheld log periodic they waved around. Another part of the decline of the original Lojack system was the high price of providing good DF receivers to police departments, so not many had them. LoJack never got big into having their own DF "hunters" on staff like other companies using transponders did.

Re: NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

#126

Post by brink »

nwellinghoff wrote: post #110

Better idea. Maybe car manufacturers could introduce 2 factor to start your car. Of course one could disable this. But when you feel you are in a shady spot. Your car prompts your phone to enable two factor to start etc

If they could implement this on an open protocol, that'd be great too. The last thing I need is some proprietary cloud service that goes down twice a month to start my car.

But what would be even better is just enabling a password.

Re: NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

#127

Post by briandear »

morkalork wrote: post #12
politelemon wrote: post #3

This article throws up many flags for me, not necessarily red, but of a worrying color. It first celebrates surveillance devices as a net positive and hand-waves away its problems. But most importantly, it is awfully shortsighted to allow a single company to entrench itself further into societal transactions. However, hearing it is inconvenient, so I am often dismissed for saying so. > They're made by Apple, which me…

21st century "let them eat cake"

If you can afford to park a car in NYC, you can afford Air Tags.

Re: NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

#128

Post by asdff »

rootusrootus wrote: post #115
dinkblam wrote: post #9

i am unsure how AirTags can be recommended by anyone in any situation to prevent theft. their "anti-tracking" features make them completely useless in any situation where theft is involved (or theft happens after loosing the item). the thief is alerted to their presence automatically and can disable them quickly. perfect for thieves! AirTags can only be used for misplaced items, any utility for situations involving t…

Yeah after buying a few AirTags early on, I've largely given up on them. Too much of a hassle as it tries not to be usable to stalk, so I can't use it for the other handy use cases.

Good for checked luggage or bags you might leave behind somewhere.

Re: NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

#129

Post by sgustard »

Animats wrote: post #112

LoJack used to be the go-to company for this. No more. Classic LoJack had good privacy. It's a box hidden somewhere in the car, with a connection to vehicle power. It has a transmitter, but normally doesn't transmit. If your car is stolen, you report this to the police, which report it to LoJack. That broadcasts an ID over a subcarrier of some local FM broadcast station. The receiver in the Lojack unit listens for th…

I assume the "LoJack Inside" window sticker is the main technology you really want? Suggest the thief go steal a different car?
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