New way that thieves are breaking into your car in record TIME

Well that was weird. I had typed some text in my post expaining how easy it was to "hack" snopes no text select script, and somehow it all ended up as a link comment that shows up in the status window when you hover over the first link! For the curious, it was as simple as merly using Ctrl-A to select everything on the page (print version) and Ctrl-C to copy it to the clipboard. They merely disabled the ability to select text by pressing the mouse button!

One thing true I heard in Texas from policeman's wife just last week re car theft-related problems that are being encountered here in cities like Dallas:

What is being done is that a group pulls off this caper where they break into the car while you are parked at work in a big lot or up in a garage downtown or perhaps you are doing business or shopping at a mall, etc. They watch you park and go in then come over & just toss brick thru window on passenger side then get into car and they do NOT bother trying to steal the car.

Instead, they pull out the garage door opener and then open glove box to grab out all paperwork to take. Guess what ,,, your INSURANCE CARD ( + title papers - most everything you keep in the car for proof requirements) etc, all have your home address ( + name too = ID theft?) on 'em.

BINGO !

Group either has mapsco book or someone to look up addie and give directions via cell (or laptop w/ internet in their car) --- > they right away go to your house, use opener to access garage and pull in & shut door behind them. Despite thinking you live in a nice safe area, it is fact that few people have anyone that stays home during workday in most neighborhoods or folks who would happen to be out in their front yard to see suspect activity.

So.... If the door going from house into garage is not locked or easily opened w/ pry bar, no alarm system armed, then they are in fast to clean out jewelry, electronics and any high dollar items they can load in their car before fleeing.

If they cannot get into house, then they still take whatever is in the garage then just back out.

Very costly to replace the opener, fix the window, get house security alarms installed or working again, etc and also there is that yukky insecure feeling that you get wondering if they will be back, now they know your place and who you are, etc. They have some very VALUABLE info about you in their hands.

Don't have answer re the garage opener kept in the car ... any ideas? For sure, don't put ID info in places to easy to locate in your car! Hide it under carpet or ??

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Another item that was in USA Today last week: There are devices being put on gasoline pumps that will spy on your credit card when you use it at the pump. There are even fake insertion readers that crooks can afix over the pump and it records the magnetic strip off your car when you insert it to activate the pump. Another form is like a tiny camera that captures the strip data and hardly noticeable on the pump. This is happening bigtime is some areas of USA and spreading fast.

Oh here is that article from 8/4, read yourself:

Thieves skim credit card data at fuel pumps
[link to www.usatoday.com]

do not leave garage door opener in your auto..do not carry house keys with car keys .crooks got keys to everything if they snatch your purse...

I keep my car papers in my wallet and I have a detached garage (which they wouldn't have info on from the car unless they somehow snatched my wallet.) Certainly nothing of value in my garage.

Thanks!
I just copy pasted Obama saying he'd been to 57 states from there.
He really did say that!

i know this story will raise BS flags, but here goes...in the late 90s, nyc, i had a habit of, when having nothing to do, taking what i called "forced marches" through the streets of manhattan...id wander through vast areas, just watching the crowds, catching the freak shows, and just basically wading in the sea of humanity that nyc is famous for....in the high east 20s, theres a commercial neighborhood that is full of asian businesses...alot of jewelers, importers etc....pretty "upscale"....it also contains some "swank" eateries, that cater to these asian businessmen.....one night on my march, i happened to notice a couple of early twenties asian cats that fit the profile of "exchange students"....glasses, those swept back brushcuts, 10 year out of style clothing....but, they had a device that looked kind of like the current issue of "radar gun", only it had what appeared to be 2 telescopelike tv antennae coming out of the top, forming a "v", and a couple of analog guages(sweeps with pointers), and one had a notebook....they were on the corner, kind of tucked into the front of a building, and aiming it down the block, sighting over the top....i kind of dallied a minute, for no particular reason, expecting them to be maybe experimenting with a line of sight com link with buddies down the block....the restaraunt in the middle of the block had a line of high end mercedes' parked in front.... just by chance, one of the patrons had come out, and triggered his alarm remote as he approached his car, and, as the lights flashed, and the horn of the mercedes chirpped, at the same time, the needles swung on this device....the guy with the notebook wrote something, and i involuntarily said,"holy shit!!" loud enough for these 2 guys to hear me....well, these guys turned to me quickly, saw i had noticed, collapsed the antennae, tucked the notebook, and device in their jackets, and took off, not running, but kind of "high-stepping".....such devices do indeed exist.....

Full coverage insurance pays for all theft dumb ass.

Being a car breakdown/recovery man I find the quickest way thieves get in is a brick through the window. Never come across anyone using a frequency grabber.

My wife's 2007 Civic got breached twice this past weekend in our driveway after deliberately locking doors with remote key fob. She was in the house briefly the first time it happened. There was no forced entry, no alarm. Burgler took loose change and CD's.

Believe me when I say that code-grabbing/hopping/playback techniques are alive and well. I manage a large IT dept and have seen laptops with dual-socket quad-core CPU's (8 cores in all) with massive compute power that could easily hump though billions of codes in 10 minutes based on the worked required.

Lie or not (I would never put my security in the hands of snopes anyway)

I will never own a car with one of those keyless keys. Its just too easy to screw with.

Code-grabbing/hopping/playback techniques are also used by thieves sitting in neighborhoods scoping out houses with garages. Occupant leaves house via the garage and thieves
capture garage code and can gain access when they want.

..up;;