New Tool to Combat GPS Theft?

Monday, April 7. 2008

New Tool to Combat GPS Theft?

A mostly "old news" article from CBS News talks about GPS thefts and advice to prevent them. (Don't leave them in plain site; wipe off "fingerprints" of suction cups.) But, ends the article with this:

GPS manufacturers like Garmin and TomTom are trying to make their products less tempting to steal. New models now require you to enter a 4-digit pin number to work, the hope being if thieves know they can't use it, maybe they won't steal it.

Think that'll work?

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Satellite Navigation at 10:00 | Comments (6)

Comments

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If the machine locks up after a few mistakes it has a chance, but if all you have to be is patient enough to enter 9,999 permutations it is a waste of time. Do they lock after multiple tries and do they log those so a thief cannot do three, turn it off and back on and do three more?

#1 Sam on 2008-04-07 11:23 (Reply)

Instead of locking up the device should pretend to work as normally, but randomly inject the destination of a route to some predefined location (buyer's choice), such as local police station, legit owner's driveway, authorized GPS dealer ....

#2 StefanB on 2008-04-08 02:58 (Reply)

upon reaching the destination instead playing the usual "you have reached your destination" in should scream "get out of the vehicle and put your hands above your head! we have you surrounded!"

#2.1 StefanB on 2008-04-08 03:02 (Reply)

Prompted by talk of GPS theft... a scary section on BBC TV's "Real Hustle" shows a twist on the old "fake parking attendant" scam. When the car is left with the imposter, the driver has left his house keys and GPS in the glovebox. The thief boots up the GPS, selects "Home" and is directed to the car owner's house, with the keys, and the knowledge that the owner isn't home.

So perhaps it isn't clever to have your driveway set as the "Home" location - the street corner may be close enough!

#3 Rob on 2008-04-08 03:21 (Reply)

I'm not sure the thieves who do the stealing are the ones who will try to use the units. I kind of imagine that thieves steal them mostly for resale. But at least the bozos who buy them out of a car trunk might be caught, if continuous wrong pin numbers could be set to trigger some kind of location alert to the owner's cellphone or Email. (Sending it directly to the police would be overwhelming, as well as giving a lot of false alarms.)

#4 Dechenne Cecil on 2008-04-08 08:50 (Reply)

Etherikio has developed three anti-theft technologies for GPS systems. The three technologies are based on RFID, radio frequency and Infrared systems. The technologies are practical and user friendly. A stolen GPS would get disabled by this technology. Patents have been filed for all three technologies.

Theft of GPS systems has become a menace because although some GPS systems are not very expensive, thieves damage the car during the process of stealing, they also get access to personal items and documents kept in the car. Password protection for GPS is not very effective for various reasons. Rental car companies have to give out the passwords to various customers, maintenance of password is an issue when multiple members of the family or friends use the GPS, entering the password while driving could divert attention from the road, besides the passwords could be broken in a couple of days time. Etherikio has taken into account all the shortcomings of existing anti-theft technologies and arrived on an effective solution. Please visit our web page www.etherikio.com for further details.

#5 Siddhartha Saikia (Link) on 2008-04-27 05:53 (Reply)

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