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Comment by thelean12 | Hacker News Reader

The best and only important deterrent is to not have anything to steal, especially in plain view. If everyone did this then theft from parked cars would drop to zero, and break-ins to near zero.

Smash and grabbers don't care about alarms. They'll be gone in a few seconds anyway.

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Unfortunately your suggestion is only a half measure and a significant number of break ins are to steal parts off the car itself.

Theft of airbags is very common as is theft of catalytic converters.

Airbag theft: https://wjla.com/news/local/the-dc-area-has-become-a-hot-spo...

Catalytic Converter theft impacting Prius owners. https://www.torquenews.com/8113/toyota-prius-owners-are-aski...

Can confirm and was going to make this exact comment.

My entire life I made sure my car was spotless and nothing of value was visible to make it a less attractive target. The one time it got smashed into was to steal the airbag. It was infuriating.

Also anything with clearance. Had one cut out of my Land Rover in Venice, took them like 3 minutes.

We checked NextDoor in the morning and it seemed like dozens had been taken that week.

Right. The alarm makes them only target the easily available junk that is in plain view. With no alarm, the thief could quietly spend 30 minutes "working on" the vehicle so they could clear out your trunk, and maybe even a few parts like the radio/GPS

No thief is going to spend 30 minutes on a suburban street rifling through a car. If it's in a secluded parking area, or behind a building, maybe. But not on a main street with neighbours and traffic.

AFAIK, people don't really steal stock radios anymore. Or at least, it's not very common.

Your trunk should also be empty of anything valuable. There's no reason to keep much back there overnight. I guess thieves could steal my tire chains and donut right now, but that hardly seems worth the trouble.

Jokes on any thief that tries to steal from my trunk. I don't really care about any of the junk in there other than maybe my jumper cables and tool set. Have fun sorting through all of the extra stuff to find them in time

Thieves stole my chains, first aid kit, and my cheap ass toolkit that I kept in the trunk. No value on any of that shit so I’m not sure why they took it. But they also left an envelope that had a piece of paper in it with scribbles in it, and a roof rack mount from a different car. Thieves aren’t always stealing things because it’s logical.

had someone smash my window and rifle through my stuff. Window was $70. I found a uncached $375 check on the passenger seat I had lost in all of the checks from work (back when you got physical checks). So... yay!

Even with an alarm... our car was stolen from our (detached) garage. If anything, the garage gave them ample cover to work in privacy, actually.

Still not sure exactly how they did it... Our vehicle has physical keys, no wireless fobs or keyless entry, so it wasn't a relay/clone attack. They basically just stripped out the ignition, and busted out all the interior lights, and did something in the fuse box (probably pulled a fuse or something to disable the alarm while they worked on the ignition cylinder). We have them on video driving away in our car... Apparently Kia really sucks at anti-theft.

We still had all keys in our possession, too. Normally, if you unlock or open the door from inside, while it's locked, the alarm goes off. The car was recovered only a few blocks away, parked in an alley, blocking someone else's garage. I got videos of the thieves walking away down the alley after ditching it.

They left actual valuables in the car/garage like tools, sunglasses, camping gear, etc... and destroyed a lot of nonsense things. The only valuable thing they took was the dash cam.

As it stands, the garage, the alarm, the steering lock, key requirement, and video recording did little to stop them. The garage was locked too, and very well lit with motion activated flood lights. I don't know what else we could have done other than have the garage secured with motion/door sensors and a very loud exterior siren/strobes... to protect our shitty 2011 Kia. lol, right...

Basically, thieves gonna thieve, and vandals gonna vandal.

https://denver.cbslocal.com/2019/12/05/denver-police-kia-the...

That long story and it didn't look like they got much out of it. At that point you start to wonder about the motive. Drugs? Plus not having a lot of intellegence or skill?

Probably needed a disposable car for a crime.

Hm. Maybe I am wrong on this, but then you would expect them to dispose it near a potentially faraway crime scene, not close to where it was stolen.

Plans can change. OP asked a question, and I provided a possibility that wasn't previously considered.

Well it kinda fits what I heard about something like meth, where someone might expend a lot of energy on a wild plan (elaborate heist of a Hyundai) but not have much to show for it (Hyundai abandoned a few blocks away with nothing of value removed).

Didn't seem like a rational actor.

Hmm, too late to edit, but it appears I mis-remembered Kia as Hyundai. I remembered the country of origin correctly though!

My friend had a thief steal her microwave in a smash and grab. She stopped to go into the gas station for nor more than a few minutes to pay for gas.

Store your stuff in the trunk. Always. We all think it won't happen to us until it does.

I subscribe to that philosophy, too. Still, it didn't stop someone from breaking into my car anyway and throwing all the crap in my glovebox around the car and leaving trash everywhere. The police didn't even want to file a report.

Yes. The only time I've had a car broken into I had left a suit jacket on a hanger next to a rear window. Perhaps they thought the jacket might have had a wallet in it. They didn't find my emergency cache of 'petrol money' I keep in my car in case I forget or lose my wallet and need to fill up. This was a hotel car park in the UK town of Bedford.

If you do put stuff in the boot (trunk) you should do this before you park, otherwise it is a dead giveaway that you are hiding something valuable.

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