Theft of valuables in Prius

Yes there's a lining.

Yikes Los Angeles, my neck of the woods

 

The simplest answer is usually the correct one. BTDT and lost a cheap trac-fone.

 

Only the driver door pocket ransacked?
Not the glove box or center console?

FWIW I venture to say you left unlocked or better half cleaned the car?
Yet I guess it could have been picked, slim jim-med, etc, yet no alarm?

Good luck in discovery of your mystery.

 

there are also thieves, especially in cali, who can use a machine to steal your fob code or something when you lock the car, then use it to unlock, after you go in the house.

 

There was news reports on TV recently, about the 2017 Camry being easily unlocked by some type of remote device. Other cars as well. The criminals are always a step ahead in technology.

Also, there have been several reports by Gen4 Prius owners finding their car unlocked. Myself included. It's a mystery. I'm positive I locked it, because I heard the beep. When I come out the next morning I find it unlocked.

My 2016 Prius is more strange, odd, and weird than any other car I've ever owned. The only thing good about it is the gas mileage!

 

disable your garage door opener until you can change the code.

 

They can target you again.
Why wouldn't they?

Don't put anything of value in the car for three months, imo. Including the new garage door opener you'll be getting.

Maybe put that under the front seat..
Maybe.

 

A thin sheet of rubbery grey material. It just sits there.

 

I hate to break it to you, but it's also possible that you forgot to lock the doors. If they'd hacked your locks, they could have driven away with the car. Very quietly, I might add.

 

Actually, the problem with the Prius keyfobs is well known.
Setup: Your fob, somewhere within radio range. This mean within a couple of hundred years of your car.
The crook: An nice person with a more or less standard thief box. Available on-line.
What happens: The weak radio signal from the Prius is picked up by the thief box and rebroadcast at much higher power. This is picked up by the fob. It thinks it's close to the car (Big Signal!) and broadcasts the signal back to the car.
Normally, this signal would be too weak, given the distance, to unlock the doors. However, the thief box has a second receiver/transmitter that is sensitive enough to pick up the fob signal and rebroadcast it to the car.
Crook grabs the door handle: The car opens.

This has been reported in the NY Times, where a reporter watched a pair of teens break into his locked car, out on the street, with his fob on the kitchen windowsill, where he kept it. He ran out the door, they noticed, and took off.

My car's in my garage, so I don't worry about it too much. But street parking, at home or in a business district, can get one in trouble. At work, me and my fob are far enough away from the car so this trick won't work.

Only known solution: Putting your fob in an electromagnetic enclosure. Little tin can, good ESD bag, etc. But then you have to take the fob out when you want to use it, which kind of wrecks the convenience.

The car START button mechanism is supposedly different: I've heard of cars getting unlocked, but not driven away. Which would explain why your stuff was riffled through, but the car itself wasn't stolen.

KBeck

 

Or, turn off the SKS, so the doors don't unlock without pressing the button on the fob.

 

I measured the centre console inlay on our 2010, made a sketch:


(There's an additional, large radius fillet at the shallow deflection along the sides, but just doing a sharp corner at the 2" mark produces about the same outline.

 

Hey everybody
True or not true?

 

Search on Google: ny times prius key fob open doors
Results, all legit:
1. NY Times
2. A bit more in-depth, but worried about it being fake
3. And a Prius Chat thread on the subject

I'm a EE; the procedure described doesn't sound preposterous, especially as the Fob and the car work on different frequencies. Does somebody have a proof or something that the NY Times guy made it up from the whole cloth?

KBeck

 

It doesn't sound preposterous, but it does sound a little complicated when a slim-jim or just pulling on 100 door handles is much more effective.
If I were the looters and hacked the FOB, I would have driven the car a few blocks away and taken my time and completely ransacked the car - or just stolen it outright.

Look for scratches in the window gasket or admit to yourself that you might just have left the door open.

 

My neighbor across the street had her car broken into just the other night. I should say, she had it illegally entered, as the doors were unlocked. The typical M.O. of the run of the mill tweeker is to just walk down the street and try door handles. It's always a good habit to physically check the doors to make certain they are locked. Just about everyone has inadvertently left their car unlocked at one time or another. Unfortunately, stealing other people's property is just a way of life for a large population of our society.

 

Prius She Wrote....
We can debate forever "how" the crime happened...and we really won't know. Thieves can gain access in any manner from simply opening an unlocked door....to a uncountable number of more complicated maneuvers.

But I strongly second the advice to disable your garage door until you get the code changed.
Obviously people steal the remotes to gain access to your garage....and then you house.

At this point securing everything else would be my #1 priority.