Car Thieves Using High-Tech Gadgets to Break Into Vehicles

The advances that have been made in the automotive technology in the past decades have been pretty amazing, and today's vehicles are more efficient, reliable, and safer than ever. With that in mind, it's only natural to think that modern vehicles are tougher to break into, but as they become more high-tech, car thieves are following suit in an effort to make sure they don't get put out of business. Lately, an increased use of sophisticated gadgets by car thieves has been noticed, which allows them to break into cars much more easily and get away with it.

Car thieves in the United States, as well as the UK, have started using a piece of equipment that allows them to intercept and recreate the signals from key fobs, so that they can unlock a car's doors remotely and access its on-board computer. This way, they can take control of the car's alarm system, disable it, get into the car and drive away or steal some valuable items that they find inside, leaving no trace behind them. Since they don't have to touch a car's doors or windows to unlock it, they don't leave any fingerprints, which makes it difficult to track them down.

Considering how efficient it is, it seems that the equipment thieves use must be pretty expensive, but it's actually quite cheap and easy to obtain. Criminals buy these gadgets online, and they only cost a few bucks. Even though it's obviously a relatively simple piece of equipment, it is clearly sophisticated enough to allow thieves to break into the most high-tech cars out there. Virtually all new vehicles are vulnerable to attacks performed with this hacking equipment, and for now, there seems to be no solution to this problem.

Law enforcement has been unable to prevent these burglaries, and the only help they have offered car owners is advising them to avoid leaving valuable items in their vehicles when they are parked. Another issue for the victims of these crimes is that many of them don't even know whether the thieves have unlocked their cars' doors using some sort of device, or they left their vehicles unlocked, blaming themselves for not being careful enough and giving thieves the opportunity to burglarize their vehicles without breaking a sweat.

However, even though the methods that car thieves employ are becoming more sophisticated, which should suggest that they should be able to steal more cars, but statistics show that that car theft has actually been on the decline lately. According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, in 2012, a total of 720,000 motor vehicles were reported to be stolen in the U.S., which is a decrease of 24.8% compared to 2008, and 42.8% compared to 2003. But, only 12 percent of thefts were cleared in 2012.

According to data from the National Insurance Crime Bureau, the top stolen vehicle in the U.S. in 2012 was Honda Accord, followed by Honda Civic. When it comes to the areas with the highest auto theft rates, most of them were in California, with the Modesto metro area at first place, followed by Fresno and Bakersfield.