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funny thing is here no one parks their cars in garages as garages are full of junk. So there are a lot of cars on driveways, even fancy ones.. random shot from North York street taken from Google maps

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Shouldn’t be a problem in North York. Place your own tracker in your vehicle and with the typical traffic jams in that area you’ll likely catch up to the thieves on foot.
 
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In this day and age, it’s a little surprising that cars valued in the 10s of thousands, and especially cars valued in the 100s of thousands, aren’t equipped with a “find my vehicle” GPS tracking system. Owners should be able to know the location of their car.
 
why walk down the street and look for nice cars? It's much more convenient to look at lots of nice cars in high-end malls, among other places, and pick and choose which ones to put a tracker on.
So some thieves used it to in a crime , unless its a crime that was not doable before airTags I dont see that as an issue at all , and even If it was I wouldn't care , its like telling me the internet is bad and should be banned because so much of today frauds are being done via the internet , you could track those cars without airTags , thieves also use other tools that we (normal folks) use for non crime related things , are those should be looked at as well ? a screwdriver ? a hammer ? god knows what else modern criminal use.
 
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The article says only 5 thefts have been linked to airtags out of 2000…. It is indeed an increased number from 0 to 5, but it gives the impression that airtags are being used to steal rare cars left right and center. Whatnif the owner also has an aidtag in the car and then follow the thieves? Airtag against Airtag!
 
I’d expect “expensive“ cars are parked in garages and private driveways with gates. Makes no sense to me. 5 cars? Where they parked at a friends crappy house?
 
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I have heard on the radio, the majority of vehicles being stolen are Honda/Toyota/Lexus SUVs like CRVs and Highlanders. Its not the BMWs or Mercedes, Ferrari's or Lamborghinis or whatever people here are thinking ;-) . Some of the the Hondas/Toyotas are up in $$ when fully loaded.

here's a report from earlier in the year:

"According to police, 55 per cent of the vehicles targeted include Lexus RX350, Toyota SUV and Honda CR-V models."
see:


More Toyota/Lexus thefts:

 
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I have heard on the radio, the majority of vehicles being stolen are Honda/Toyota/Lexus SUVs like CRVs and Highlanders. Its not the BMWs or Mercedes that people are thinking. Some of the the Hondas/Toyotas are up in $$ when fully loaded.

here's a report from earlier in the year:

"According to police, 55 per cent of the vehicles targeted include Lexus RX350, Toyota SUV and Honda CR-V models."
see:
It's about the parts. Besides being wildly popular, the cars/manufacturers you listed use common parts. So when they strip the stolen cars down for parts, they are usable for many many cars on the road today. Thus, the value of the parts are way more than the value of the complete cars.
 
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I dunno, this just seems like an unnecessary step for someone that wants to steal a car? See car, steal car.
 
In this day and age, it’s a little surprising that cars valued in the 10s of thousands, and especially cars valued in the 100s of thousands, aren’t equipped with a “find my vehicle” GPS tracking system. Owners should be able to know the location of their car.
They are... My 2021 Nissan Rogue has that built-in, although it's a monthly subscription, so perhaps not everyone is willing to pay for it.

However, I'm also fairly confident that professional thieves know how to disable that too. If you read the original police bulletin, they're plugging into the on-board diagnostics port with a computer that hacks the vehicle to make it accept their keys, so presumably disabling the built-in tracking system would be pretty trivial to do by comparison.
 
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I dunno, this just seems like an unnecessary step for someone that wants to steal a car? See car, steal car.
Well, I think these are professionals thieves who deal in bulk car thefts. After all, they're not doing this to get a nice car for themselves... They're doing it for profit. The more cars they can steal in a given night, the more money they rake in.

The police report says they've traditionally just driven around neighbourhoods looking for targets. The AirTags just save them the time of doing that. Instead, they can go hit a mall parking lot for some "one-stop shopping." Drop a few dozen AirTags on target vehicles, and then go and harvest them at their leisure. Crooks have done that with GPS trackers for years, but AirTags are considerably cheaper, especially since not every tracked vehicle ends up being an easy mark — they could be parked in garages or have other security measures in place.
 
Why advertise if they only had 5 out of 2000?? They also only had 5 arrests out of 2000 so want more of these schmucks to use this as it allows them to roll them up in seconds as they know who and where they are..
No, they have found five cases where an AirTag was planted on a vehicle. Those weren't necessarily from arrests — they could have just easily come from people who found the AirTag on their vehicle and called the cops.

Out of 2,000 car thefts, they said they've recovered 350 cars overall, and made 100 arrests. Police didn't say if any of the actual arrests involved AirTags.
 
We have Teslas that can show the location on the app, but I've put AirTags in each of our cars in case they get towed or stolen. With Tesla, they don't update the location unless the car is turned on, so if they're towed, you won't know where they are.
 
AirTag is designed to discourage unwanted tracking. If someone else’s AirTag finds its way into your stuff, your iPhone will notice it’s traveling with you and send you an alert. After a while, if you still haven’t found it, the AirTag will start playing a sound to let you know it’s there.

Of course, if you happen to be with a friend who has an AirTag, or on a train with a whole bunch of people with AirTag, don’t worry. These alerts are triggered only when an AirTag is separated from its owner.
 
funny thing is here no one parks their cars in garages as garages are full of junk. So there are a lot of cars on driveways, even fancy ones.. random shot from North York street taken from Google maps

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I’m thinking they are not your typical of what 90% of what most criminals do that walk the streets stealing $20,000 to $90,000 cars and trucks but looking for $500,000 to million dollar vehicles.

Walk in suburb for say a 30 minute walk there are lots of expensive cars and pick up trucks in the $40,000 to $90,000 range just not your $500,000 to million dollar vehicles

Well big city can have millions of streets so if they are looking for
$500,000 to million dollar vehicles you are going to be walking for days.

This sounds like organize crime targeting very expensive cars.
 
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A whopping FIVE reported cases; pretty sure dongle hacking is more than 5 cases and gets nowhere near the coverage.
Dongle hacking is old news by now, but it still pops up in police advisories from time to time.

This is new, and it’s something that’s preventable if people are made aware of it. In the very least somebody reading this news is far less likely to ignore an unknown AirTag warning when driving home from a mall. Some may even go so far as to check their car for AirTags (and iOS 15.2 will make that even easier to do).

Plus, the five cases are only the ones where owners likely found the AirTags and reported them. It seems likely there could be many more where the cars were successfully stolen and nobody ever knew if they were tracked. Several hundred cars have been stolen in York Region alone since AirTags came out, and several thousand across the entire GTA — it’s unlikely the ring of thieves using AirTags are confining their activities to York, and they’re out to pick up as many cars as they can, so “painting their targets” with AirTags makes that a whole lot easier.
 
This sounds like organize crime targeting very expensive cars.
Organized crime, yes. Professional car theft rings that ship the vehicles overseas en masse, it would seem. At least that’s what’s most commonly happening in southern Ontario, by most reports.

Not very expensive cars, though. This is a volume business. Easier to make off with a dozen Toyota RAV4’s and Honda CR-V’s than a single Ferrari or Lamborghini — most of which aren’t likely being left out in driveways anyway.

The York police said the most commonly targeted vehicles up there are Lexus RX350s and Ford F-150s, and from the pictures it looks like one of the AirTags was found on a Ford.

A recent Toronto Star article reported that police and customs officials recovered 30 vehicles at the Port of Halifax, bound for Dubai, including at least one from Toronto (the reporter had his Toyota Highlander stolen, and it was in that batch):

Among the cars were more Toyota Highlanders and Toyota RAV4s, Ford F150 pickup trucks, Lexus RX 350s, Honda CR-Vs and a few Porsches. A conservative guess is these 30 vehicles recovered that day were worth in total $1.6 million in Canada.

 
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Organized crime, yes. Professional car theft rings that ship the vehicles overseas en masse, it would seem. At least that’s what’s most commonly happening in southern Ontario, by most reports.

Not very expensive cars, though. This is a volume business. Easier to make off with a dozen Toyota RAV4’s and Honda CR-V’s than a single Ferrari or Lamborghini — most of which aren’t likely being left out in driveways anyway.

The York police said the most commonly targeted vehicles up there are Lexus RX350s and Ford F-150s, and from the pictures it looks like one of the AirTags was found on a Ford.

A recent Toronto Star article reported that police and customs officials recovered 30 vehicles at the Port of Halifax, bound for Dubai, including at least one from Toronto (the reporter had his Toyota Highlander stolen, and it was in that batch):




AirTag warnings are pretty easy to understand and as an Apple product you’ll find plenty people aware of them already. We also don’t know how many thieves are actually caught as a direct result of being tracked with a few AirTags in cars, I bet there isn’t much give to the negative if any.
 
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