Why wrapping car keys in tinfoil may be a dumb idea!
Last week I had a paranoid customer tell me that she had taken to wrapping her car keys in tin foil. She was doing this to prevent car thieves from reading her remote code after reading an article on stuff.co.nz
Smart Keys and Dumb Journalist
Her car key was a good old-fashioned remote key like the one pictured in the Stuff story. It is not a smart key and will only transmit when the button on the remote is pressed.
The story is was about modern vehicle theft and how to prevent it from happening. Sadly it was not researched and is very misleading.
Regurgitated Fake News
The thing is most of the keyboard jockeys are simply regurgitating news stories from other sites without doing any research. They then publish the story and wonder why the term “fake news” has become such a common term!
Should you wrap your car key in Aluminium Foil?
It’s not just Stuff I’m having a pop at here, the internet is riddled with poor advice about protecting your car. It only takes a quick Google search to find images of car keys wrapped in tinfoil…
Wrapping car keys in tinfoil
I explained to my customer how her remote key works and set her mind at ease, then promised to write a blog post about it.
To understand how a relay attack works have a read up on my blog post about modern vehicle theft methods. I’ve actually done some homework and double checked the facts before publishing the information.
