What is Digg?Warning: The Content in this Article May be Inaccurate
Readers have reported that this story contains information that may not be accurate.114 Comments
- StevoCJ, on 10/12/2007, -3/+66I'll just note that locking your keys in the car probably isn't essential to this test (and could turn out to be rather embarrassing).
- tangledweb, on 10/12/2007, -1/+62I think that the most likely explanation is that the "tester" performed the "test" in his own driveway with two people and two phones but underestimated the normal range on his keyless locking system. Sure, standing near your car with a phone and having somebody else stand 50 feet away with a phone and keyfob unlocks the car, but doing the same thing holding two bananas works too.
- gadgetsguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+56A classic case of sheep leeding sheep! Hahahahahaaaa
http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/keyless.asp - Rosewood, on 10/12/2007, -7/+341) Lock your keys in the car.
2) Have someone who has a working key fob handy call your cell phone.
3) Hold your phone near the car and have the other person press the unlock button.
4) Somehow your car unlocks.
This makes no ***** sense by the way. - afex, on 10/12/2007, -1/+27only GSM bananas will work.
- clark24, on 10/12/2007, -6/+27To those of you that this is not working for... You must first make sure to lock your keys in the car before attempting this hack! Not only is your cell phone able to transmit the signal from your key fob, but it also knows when your keys are actually locked in the car. The further away the person with the spare is, the better this seems to work too! When I called my uncle in Washington state (I live in South Florida) he didn't even have to press the unlock button and my car just started unlocking itself. However, when I called my sister, just 10 miles away, she had to press it about a half dozen times before it unlocked. Weeeiiiiirdd! I guess the most important thing is that you lock the keys in your car and don't have a spare in the general vicinity! Once you've done that, this hack is bound to work! Good luck!
Update!!! I've found that you can improve the efficiency of this hack by putting the person on speakerphone. The catch is that you need to be around a lot of other people, I find that co-workers and members of the opposite sex work the best. I have not been able to figure it why this works yet exactly. Since I once read an article on the Internet about how to build your own radio, I'm pretty much an expert on waves and tides and such. I'm sure I can figure this all out. I think it has something to do with the brain waves transmitting the 4.815162342 frequency across the wave paths which in turn amplifies the signal of your key fob! Just a hunch though, I will post again when I have done more research. - Rosewood, on 10/12/2007, -3/+21I like to give people the benefit of the doubt but...
1) This makes no ***** sense and
2) I don't know the blog or the guy and such a dubious claim needs things like video evidence or something else to back this up. - ext237, on 10/12/2007, -6/+24Haven't tried this with my car. But one time I got to work and realized I forgot my magnetic card key at home. Called my wife, she held my keycard up to her cell phone and I held my cell phone up to the card reader and the door unlocked ... as my boss just happened to opened the door from the other side. I was immediately fired for attempting to hack the company security system.
Ok, I made it all up, but its as plausible as this story. No digg. - bubs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18I think they call this "OnStar"
- StevoCJ, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18Make it two chicks completely nekkid and I'm there
- DoctorNo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15From the cited article:
"More than a few people have inadvertently fooled themselves into believing the cell phone method of unlocking car doors actually works because they tried it and achieved the desired results — not realizing their cars were still within range of their keyless remote devices, and the signals that unlocked the doors were transmitted the usual way [i.e., through the air], not via cellular phone connections." - letaalio, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17Try this out.
Find out how far your key-remote works (just walk away from the car and try to unlock it until it doesn't work), then put your remote to your head and push unlock again. Magically it DOES work now. I've tried this and it is true. - gothicx00, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Ok... The only thing that comes even close to making sense here is two basic facts. One, the signal is OOK which is about as basic as radio transmissions get. It's sorta like morse code, in that a transmission for a predetermined period is considered a 1 and the absence of that signal is considered a 0.
The second is it must have something to do with additive and subtractive frequencies. When more than one frequency is emitted from a source, or intermix in a space, the result is not just the source frequencies but also the sum and the difference of those frequencies. Example: 315mhz and 18mhz interacting in the same space would result in both 333mhz and 297mhz. If the phone itself emits a constant frequency, then if you try and transmit 315mhz, and one of the additive or subtractive frequencies falls with in the range of the phones mic, it is technically possible for that frequency (315mhz) to end up being recreated on the other end. Many many things would have to line up correctly for it to happen, or the tolerence of the reciever must be very liberal (meaning if it picks up the OOK signal on a frequency close to 315mhz it will still engage the lock solinoid).
If you think this is dumb please let me know, but it's the best I can personally come up with. - Evoguy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12I was just thinking about this a little more... On the other side of the transmission, the speaker is definately out for reproducing the 315MHz carrier, so it must be the actual tower broadcast carrier or some internal circuit leakage from the phone after it demultiplexes the signal? GSM is TDMA right? So the actual tower wouldn't be able to affect the car's system at all without being demuxed by the phone... how much power are these phones leaking anyway? It'd have to be something fairly significant, unless it's feedback through the antenna or something. Makes me worry a bit about holding it next to my head constantly... hehe
- Evoguy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Wow.. just wow. I was pretty sure that phone Vocoders were bandpass of 20Hz to 4KHz since that was the bulk of the human voice frequency spectrum. So there's no way the carrier modulation would get through that, I guess it'd have to be somehow modulating the phone's carrier itself? At GSM 900Mhz I could *maybe* see how that'd make it through the switching network and modulate the signal out to the handset.. even that seems dubious though. I would think the Vocoded data would be packet switched digitally in the actual phone network though, so any modulation of the first phone's carrier would be lost wouldn't it?
- addisonj, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12hmmm... i smell a gone in sixty seconds sequel coming on... this time staring vin diesel as a former car thief who has turned to a cop, terrorists capture the presidents daughter and want 120 cars in 24 hours or else they kill her! there only choice is to steal them! Vin diesel's geeky computer hacker sidekick buddy (played either by the nerdy CSI guy who is a lab-tech, or the lead character from numb3rs) comes up with a brilliant plan to steal the final car from a bunker using just his cell phone and key fob he bought of ebay. In between these bits are horrible acting, exploding cars, a gang fight, and some check getting half naked in a car...
Take that michael bay - Rosewood, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9You get dugg up, the story gets dugg down. It is only fair.
- vprice509, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10'news article' submitter :
It's "lo and behold", not "low and behold". I was going to add, "you illiterate *****", but that wouldn't be very nice. - disillusioned, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9On star has a special two-way system that allows them to track all sorts of data, like when your air bag deploys and where you are. It's not just a basic cellular system, or, it is, and it uses some basic SMS-based system to trigger the events. Regardless, OnStar != people with cellphones holding key fobs nearby.
- Stalks, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10wait, this could make money ..
An unlock service, automated. Thousands of spare keyfobs at the ready. You lock your keys in the car, but wait! You subscribed to KEYLESS ENTRY INSURANCE™! Ring the number, enter your 24 digit pin, hold the phone in front of the car and BHAM! That £10 a month just paid off. - PabloEscobar666, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Somebody with a Sony TV remote control please call me and change the channel from my TV.
- Alex.w, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8£10/mo, i think the model might stretch to using an 0900 number (50p/min).. If its £10/mo.. paying a locksmith to come out every six months is cheaper.
- Grimdotdotdot, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9I've tried it with three different cars.
It didn't work. - ZeroMP, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I have my money on the fact that he actually WAS holding a banana and only THOUGHT it was a GSM phone.
- Zippo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I think I'll just stick with not leaving my keys in the car.
- socokoolaid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7So...to put it simply a cell phone reproduces audible sounds from the remote phone and is incapable of reproducting the Radio Frequency signals that a keyless entry would produce and car would require to unlock.
- vern01, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11I think people post things like this just to get hits on their sites. ITs FALSE in case you were taken in.
http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/keyless.asp - idonthack, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Shhh, don't tell *him* that.
- Skeuomorph, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6For me, this trick works best touching the unside of the chin and yeilds an almost 50% longer range.
- Aliarse, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6The ultimate "keyless entry system"
http://www.themediadrome.com/Images/tv/lapd_pasquariello.gif - crackhammer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Now to point the key fob at my head and talk into my cell phone - it's BOUND to work!
- SuperFarStucker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Light *is* a radio signal, or more precisely an electromagnetic wave. However, light is out of the frequency range of common "radio" devices. Even low IR is upwards of 400 THz, compared to 0-6 GHz common for radio devices
- Smiley09, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7If you have keyless entry how could you lock yourself out of your own car in the first place? You press the button to lock/unlock the car, which would be in your hand. If you are leaving the car you would be outside with the remote in your hand, you would then press the button to lock the car, put remote in your pocket, and then walk away...
The only way I see people locking themselves out is by having the door open, locking it, throwing the key into the car and then shutting the door hoping to try this out and not finding the spare remote. - Darkkish, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Unless you've locked your keys OUT of your car.
http://www.bofunk.com/video/2424/blondstar.html - Alex.w, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Why is this getting modded down, I had to try so hard not to wet my self laughing thinking of all the people that are going to try this "hack".
My fav part was "I'm pretty much an expert on waves and tides and such." - webcrumb, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6It could be that he used the spellcheck. But then didn't actually reed the thing.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+12It works on our Toyota!
- joecomputerdude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4you can also use your car key fob to unlock all GSM phones.
It works... try it! - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9i dont think it works on other peoples cars, only ur own set... and spare set
- incongruity, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I refused to believe this and laughed at the wife for doing it... until I tried it. For whatever reason, it worked much more so with her mini-s' integrated key and fob as compared with my WRX's separate fob.
- socokoolaid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I wonder if we should heckle the fools who even bothered to try this, despite the obvious contradiction to the way phones and radio frequencies work?
- afex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4it has happened to my girlfriend before. she will use the physical locks on the door to lock it, e.g. open door, hit lock on door while getting out, shut door. a little while ago she ended up having her keys slide out of her pocket while she was getting something from the back of the car, and she locked them in there. i believe she has changed her method of locking since then.
- TonyCubed, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5That method was on Top Gear! haha
- dkreifus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Also cited from the snopes article:
"It's possible this method might work with cars that use something different than standard RKE systems, but it doesn't work with the vast majority of models."
Opps. Clicked wrong reply.... meant for the post below. VVV - longofest, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I'm thinking the person who calls you and presses the button has to be within a couple meters from the car in order for this to work... the cell phone thing is just a smoke screen
- jakibakes, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4for the people it works with: can you use an audio recording device to record the key fobs button press, then play it back to open the car?
- vihung, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Just think, if you were in Soviet Russia, you could press a button on your TV to change your remote
- robwistar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3no.
it doesn't matter what radio frequencies anything is travelling at: your cell phone microphone picks up sound waves and the cell phone speaker on the other end transmits sound waves. unless your car locking system works by making noise (which it doesn't) this is not going to work.
(note: something with digg is screwy, this was supposed to be in response to gothicx further up.) - hobnob, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8but f'ing funny
- xino, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Too bad there is no "my#1 commented story" feature on digg yet because I would definitely mark this one of them.
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