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Comment by notsuoh | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, but I think the broader point I'd that a car shouldn't be disabled like this in the first place due to no reception.

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The car wasn't disabled because it lost reception, it was disabled because of an anti-tampering device that activated when the owner tried to install a child car seat (admittedly, what they did to install a child seat that set off the tamper switch baffles me). It remained disabled because the remote support team couldn't fix it since the parking garage was underground and had no cell reception.

The posts on reddit said it went into some uber-lockdown because it also didn't have reception so even adding cell or wifi repeaters wouldn't have worked.

My guess is this some serious anti-theft for when your very expensive car gets stuffed in a shipping container - it bricks itself until you present it physically at a dealer (at which point you'd hope it gets flagged as stolen).

For my own edification, would you mind linking these posts you're referencing? The only comments on the reddit thread that I can find that say anything like that admit they're speculating, as opposed to the actual post which says the only thing that cell reception has to do with this is that the remote team can't access it remotely without cell reception (which is a no-brainer).

This might be a more contrived example, but this is kind of like trying too many times to unlock your tablet (made from platinum) and tech support can't unlock it when you call them because your router died and your wifi is down.

Here's the OP's comment from the final update:

>>They couldn't do the remote reset once it was outside? I thought that was the original issue

>Oh yeah, so nope. The fact it had no signal at the time of the tamper safeguard being triggered meant that remote recovery wasn't an option, even when we moved it into the open. Idk, an extra layer of theft protection I suppose.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/comments/j9qn...

Thank you very much for the update!

FWIW, most cars aren't shipped in containers. There are specialized car ships that are more or less floating parking garages. Longshoremen drive the cars out to a surface lot nearby.

They were talking about stolen cars. Although they usually get dismantled before being stuffed into multiple containers.

Most stolen cars might be shipped that way? It looked pretty easy when they did it on "The Wire".

The poster of the reddit thread clarified it wasn't swapping out seats, it was a child seat installation.

Updated for the clarification :thumbsup:

What’s the point of an anti-theft mechanism if it can be bypassed by turning off the Internet?

Seems like insurance is safer.

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