Troubleshooter: Can you keep your car from being stolen?

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How bad is vehicle theft getting? Two major insurance firms in the U.S. recently stated they would not be writing new policies for certain makes and models in specific states due to rising thefts — as well as the apparent ease with which thieves are getting these vehicles away from their owners.

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Some new-vehicle retailers are offering no-charge anti-theft devices to their customers to combat the popular image that their products are easy targets. While the affected vehicles typically involve low-tech anti-theft-equipped products, even the most advanced and expensive autos aren’t immune from the evolution of thieves’ skills. What steps can we take to ensure that our vehicles will still be waiting for us when we head out in the morning?

Steering clubs

The club is regaining popularity. The 1990s-throwback steel bar with lockable hooks is designed to make your vehicle unsteerable for cheap ($60-$100), easy to use, and readily available — but not fool-proof. The circular part of a steering wheel is made of a hollow metal tube and it’s easily bent with little effort, making the removal of a lockable club an easy and quick task. But it can still be a visible deterrent to some thieves, for they might not want to try to pawn off a damaged vehicle or risk the extra time to remove the club.

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Faraday cages

A Faraday cage is a closed metallic box or sleeve that traps and isolates radio signals.

Today’s thieves tend to rely on relay attacks, standing by your front door with an electronic device to amplify the passive signal that a keya fob produces. This can fool the vehicle’s computer into operating as if the key was present at the car, enabling them to unlock and start the vehicle.

Not all thieves use this method to steal remote-entry and keyless pushbutton-start vehicles, but since metal boxes can also be decorative items and can be free (think of the tin cookie container that Aunt Mary gave you), using one can be a no-brainer.

Alarm systems

Alarm systems that honk the horn and flash the lights seem to be a poor deterrent, as most thieves are very quick to rip the horn wires. Doorbell cameras aren’t much help either, because by the time someone notices anything, the vehicle in question is long gone.

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Tracking

Tracking systems such as Tag or LoJack services can make your vehicle easier to find when it goes missing, but they do nothing to prevent the theft in the first place.

Note that Apple AirTags are a poor solution: their anti-stalking functionality will notify a thief if the unfamiliar tag is near them for more than a few minutes and provide the option to disable it right from their phone. And of course, some thieves now use tags themselves to find your vehicle at night after catching a glimpse during the day.

OBD locks

Another trick thieves use is to program a new key using your vehicle’s OBD diagnostic port.

More than one company now offers a lockable cover for your vehicle’s onboard diagnostic port, and most products run from about $35. The connector that this lock protects is located just under the left side of the dash, and is intended to provide mechanics with access to the vehicle’s onboard computers.

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Kill switches

Kill switches wired to prevent the starter from engaging can be relatively easy for a DIY home tech with wiring knowledge to install, but add-on switches can be fairly easy to distinguish from factory controls. And as the aim of their installation is to put them within convenient reach for the driver, there isn’t a big area for a thief to search to find them. A much better idea is to use an existing factory switch such as a power window or lock control.

Some ingenious types will tie a starter kill circuit into more than one switch, requiring the driver to press a few buttons in a specific order to get the vehicle to start. On later-model vehicles with abundant computer controls and low-voltage wiring, you need to be careful not to set a ‘check-engine’ light any time you use your home-made circuit. Interrupting the power feed to the engine’s control computer as an anti-theft feature can usually avoid this.

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Garage storage

The most obvious answer to theft is to lock the vehicle in a garage. If you own a super-truck such as Ram’s TRX or Ford’s Raptor and you can’t be bothered with any of the extra anti-theft measures we’ve covered, this is about your only choice. Either way, having a vehicle that’s not listed on the top ten most stolen rides is no guarantee you won’t find an empty driveway some morning.

One last word: if you think that you can outsmart a thief by hiding your keys deep inside your house rather than by the front door, think again. Some low-tech, high-nerve thieves see no trouble simply kicking in your door and taking the keys. And as one police service officer I spoke to reminded me, you don’t really want to run into these types outside your bedroom door in the middle of the night.