Car owners should not expect vehicle trackers to be able to help them if their car is stolen, warn experts from Thatcham Research, who say that there is a “genuine and growing gap” between consumer expectation and the technical reality of so-called connected car features, says the BBC.
Ian Fogg, a smartphone analyst, said his car was stolen from outside his house in March, but he has not been able to retrieve it – despite the manufacturer, Kia, being able to view its live location via the Kia Connect service. The company told the BBC that UK law prevented the Connect function being used to live track vehicles, advising customers to use it for “convenience” rather than security.
“This car was incredibly easy to hack but incredibly difficult to track,” Mr Fogg said. “It shouldn’t be this easy to nick a car when they cost an order of magnitude more than a phone and have similar radio technology”.
He had video doorbell evidence of it being driven away, an Apple Airtag hidden inside it, in addition to the Kia Connect service. His story is a cautionary tale of how tech can promise security but cannot necessarily be relied upon in the event of a crisis.
He was abroad in March this year when his phone pinged to say he no longer had access to the Kia Connect app. Thieves had broken into the vehicle without having the keys, and had disconnected his phone via the entertainment system.
There is an unsecured process for doing this, designed to make it easier for new owners to take over the functoins.
He watched the car drive off via his video doorbell. For a short while he was able to track it via the Apple Airtag until the thieves located it and discarded it because it was making a noise – a feature introduced by Apple to combat stalking.
On its website Kia Connect advises customers to contact it in the event of a theft, but when he did, Mr Fogg was told he would have to fill in a form every time he requested the location of his car. He did this eight times, and each time he did not receive the location until 24-48 hours after the car had been recorded there.
Its last location was in Lithuania.
“Kia Connect is a customer convenience feature, not a certified security vehicle tracker,” the firm told the BBC. “Therefore, it does not provide live‑tracking functionality for stolen vehicles. Release of location details of a vehicle via Kia Connect is possible, however this must be done in full compliance with all applicable laws, in particular GDPR, and the authorities to minimise risk to the customer.”
Thatcham Research advises vehicle owners to seek out devices which have been independently certified as dedicated stolen vehicle tracking products.
It says devices should carry their own independent power source and provide genuine real-time location monitoring via a professional monitoring centre.
It adds that “these products exist precisely because most connected car apps, however sophisticated, are not engineered to perform the security function that owners may assume it provides”.
(Picture: Yay Images)
