Key Fob Cloned!
This Is Our Story
Before I start my work for today, I want to let you know something that happened this last weekend. My husband left Saturday morning to go do something. He’d gotten a little bit down the road when he happened to notice there was all sorts of stuff on the floor of the passenger seat. It was stuff from the glovebox.
So, he pulled over and had a look. Nothing seemed to be missing so he loaded it all back in and went around to the trunk. Right away he noticed that the speaker and amplifier he had for his walking tours was missing. He didn’t see that anything else was missing, though he had a sense that something else was gone. As time goes by, I’m sure he will remember what it was.
There was no damage to the car at all. No windows were broken, nor were the locks jimmied. We were puzzled.
I went on to our local NextDoor.com app to let folks know our car had been broken into. We do that around here. Folks no longer call the police or go online to make reports. Nobody responds to them anyway, so why bother? It feels like you’re just wasting everybody’s time. It’s different if you get assaulted. Even then the response is sketchy. So, yeah, Oakland, California’s sense of serenity and calm is long gone. That’s all for another story.
Just a few minutes after I’d put our story on NextDoor somebody else posted a story to say that his keyless car had been stolen that weekend. When he’d contacted his dealership, they were the ones who told him that people will stand outside your house with whatever electronic gizmos they have to somehow collect the information they need to break into your car. My husband and I always put a club on our car steering wheels and Dennis said he thinks that’s the only thing that prevented whoever broke into his car from taking it.
This story is about the RFID fabric I bought a few weeks ago. My intention was to use it to make myself a wallet. We are on a really tight budget, and I just can’t see spending money on a wallet if I can make one. It only made sense to line it with RFID fabric to prevent somebody from stealing information from my credit cards.
Little did I know folks could capture information on how to unlock and drive away with your car from the key fob inside your house. For that matter, I suppose they could follow you around as you are shopping in a store to get the same information. Who knew? I certainly didn’t.
What I did was to sew up six drawstring bags for our keys to get stored in whenever anybody is home. Normally, we just hang them up on hooks near the front door. We will still continue to do that, but now the protected bags will have keys in them. I made some extras for the neighbors.
I also decided I’m going to invest in some more of the RFID fabric and begin to create all of my bags and totes with that fabric as the lining or tucked between the inside and outside of the bags.
Edit: The guys at the car dealership told us not to get the keyfobs re-keyed. They said it would cost us $265 and the likelihood of the stinkers returning was slim. They also said Dennis might have just left the car unlocked, though all the beeping our neighbor heard in the driveway in the wee hours of the morning probably negates that theory. They said having the club on the steering wheel was great. They said the best thing to do is to protect the keyfobs when they are inside the house is to put them into the little RFID fabric lined bags.
The Links: RFID Fabric. I got mine from Temu.com. They also have it available at Amazon. There are different grades of the material which, at this point I don’t understand. But, basically, a yard of it from Amazon is $10 and a piece that’s 43 inches by 20 inches at Temu.com is about $6. You could probably just make a bag and stuff it inside your current purse or, if you tend to carry your stuff with you in your pockets, just line your favorite pocket with it. You wouldn’t even have to drag out your sewing machine. Just hand stitch it. Turn your pockets inside out to trace. Quick and easy.
NextDoor is an app where members of your local community can come together to communicate. You can notify your neighbors that you’ve got an abundance of lemons and have left a bunch of them out on the sidewalk in front of your house. Anybody can come by and get some. You can ask if anybody has a roll away cot you can borrow because you’ve got somebody coming to visit for the weekend and need a place where they can sleep. You can notify the neighbors you’ve seen a stray dog and if they’ve lost one you have it. Around here there are pictures of abandoned cars in front of people’s houses. Likely stolen and if it is their car they can come and get it. NextDoor serves communities in the US, Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. It was founded in 2022. We’ve found it to be incredibly useful. Maybe they are in your neck of the woods too. Did I mention it is free?