RFID-enabled Vehicles: Pinch My Ride 429
Billosaur writes "Wired has an excellent article on the problems with the theft of
RFID-enabled vehicles and how insurance companies are so over-confident in the technology, they are denying claims when such vehicles are stolen. Example: "Emad Wassef walked out of a Target store in Orange County, California, to find a big space where his 2003 Lincoln Navigator had been. The 38-year-old truck driver and former reserve Los Angeles police officer did what anyone would do: He reported the theft to the cops and called his insurance company. Two weeks later, the black SUV turned up near the Mexico border, minus its stereo, airbags, DVD player, and door panels. Wassef assumed he had a straightforward claim for around $25,000. His insurer, Chicago-based Unitrin Direct, disagreed." Their forensic examiner concluded that since all the keys were accounted for, there was no way the engine could have been started, despite the evidence that the ignition lock had been forced and the steering wheel locking lug had been damaged."
In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
Wired had a bit about this last month (Score:5, Insightful)
The man in the headline should clearly be bending his insurer over a barrel and giving them a good legal fucking...
Insurance companies will seek any excuse... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wired had a bit about this last month (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who really telling the truth (Score:5, Insightful)
Insurance fraud.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Insurance companies will seek any excuse... (Score:1, Insightful)
Apparent InsCo greed aside... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In other news (Score:1, Insightful)
A car can be stolen without starting its engine.
Re:Wired had a bit about this last month (Score:4, Insightful)
Tis a foolish man who assumes that dishonesty goes hand in hand with stupidity (and vice versa for that matter) high technology secuirty systems just encourage theives to be much more sophisticated...
Re:Insurance fraud.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DNA (Score:5, Insightful)
You're guilty of having sex with her around the time she was raped, yes. Is that enough to convict you of her rape? Not by a long shot.
21st century magic (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who really telling the truth (Score:3, Insightful)
Large families and boats are both lifestyle choices as well. Choices which it's perfectly valid to criticize.
Re:Insurance companies will seek any excuse... (Score:3, Insightful)
There have been cases among my acquaintances and relatives where the insurance companies refused to pay with the most threadbare excuses. My conclusion is to have only the most essential insurance and to be ready to sue the insurance company if necessary.
catch-22 (Score:3, Insightful)
And if not all the keys had been accounted for, the insurance company would have refused to pay because the guy was careless with his keys.
I hope the victim will be able to recover both his loss and penalties from the insurance company.
Ummm.. (Score:4, Insightful)
US carmakers and auto-mobile insurers are unshakably certain that vehicles protected by "transponder immobil-izers" can't be driven without the proper keys - or, at least, that circumventing those transponder systems takes more sweat and money than most auto thieves are willing to expend.
I think these companies are seriously fooling themselves. It's not like every crook has to go through the trouble of cracing the system - only one does - they can then sell their crack to everyone else.
Who wants to bet that right now, as we speak, car thieves know more about these systems than the insurance company forensic investigators do?
I don't even know anything about them and I know how this could be done. These systems work like any other public key encryption, they rely on the fact that there is a **private key** in the car that no one knows about. One leak in the system, either in the plant, or in the chip in the car, or in a disgruntled employee at a dealership, and the system falls apart. Boom, it is now trivial to make fake RFID "keys" that respond with the right handshake to private keys sent from the car.
Re:Insurance companies will seek any excuse... (Score:5, Insightful)
Insurance companies aren't in business to pay for people's losses, they're in business not to pay for people's losses, because the less they pay out, the greater profit they make.
Insurance companies are corporate gamblers. They are betting you are a good driver and that your car won't get stolen or damaged. Your insurance premium is reflective of how good of a bet this is.
That said, when they lose the bet, they will try to weasel out of paying it.
Re:Insurance companies will seek any excuse... (Score:3, Insightful)
No they are not. No more than the casinos are gamblers. They operate within a designed system that ALWAYS works out to their advantage. They know how many cars get stolen per year in Palo Alto, and charge you accordingly.
If your car gets stolen, they are still ahead.
Insurance takes the risk of one individual and spreads it across an entire population.
Re:In other news (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Apparent InsCo greed aside... (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe the policy got set from up high: We do not pay out claims on immobilizer equipped cars unless they meet [X, Y, Z] criteria.
Don't forget, there is always a disconnect between the Marketing Dept & the Engineers who design a security/safety system.
You really wanna secure your car?
Install a fuel cutoff switch somewhere non-obvious. Yes, it is security through obscurity, but most thieves don't have the time to troubleshoot a car that won't start.
Re:DNA (Score:4, Insightful)
That also assumes she's still alive.
Not necessarily... (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone is over thinking the problem (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Apparent InsCo greed aside... (Score:4, Insightful)
Read "The Rainmaker" by John Grisham for an account of some of the dirty practices of insurance companies in denying claims.
FTFA summary: "Their forensic examiner concluded that since all the keys were accounted for, there was no way the engine could have been started"
Since when do you need the keys to steal a vehicle? And if all the keys WEREN'T accounted for, the claim would have been denied because "obviously the claimant was negligent and someone else got a key from them."
Re:DNA (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:RFIDs can be cloned.. (Score:4, Insightful)
vehciles don't have access to resources to glom onto a hacked or tuner's ECU somewhere
that doesn't DO the RFID check. If it doesn't have an alarm system, it's very believeable
that someone could have busted into the vehicle, swapped out ECUs, busted the column
lock and cover and drove off in about 10 minutes or so- less if they've got more than
one thief working in parallel.
Re:Don't be so hard on the insurance company (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought it was accepted practice to stall, misrepresent, impose legal costs, hide behind obscure terminology in a contract, and employ countless other ways to avoid rendering its primary service.
Re:Apparent InsCo greed aside... (Score:5, Insightful)
Insurance companies are evil, ladies and gentlemen, and will do everything in their power to stop from having to pay out a dime. While I'm now paying $35 copay for prescriptions through Aetna, they also have a new thing called "precertification" whereby the doctor has to call the insurance company and "approve" the use of a drug. Now, if the doctor hadn't wanted me to have the drug, I'm sure I wouldn't be at CVS with my prescription. Nonetheless, yet another roadblock to actual payout of insurance coverage.
You think Pharma = evil? Check out insurance. Especially in the case of Katrina. Home insurance doesn't cover flood insurance. Flood insurance doesn't cover mud damage. Etc.
Makes me sick.
Re:Not necessarily... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they had a clear goal of making women understand that having a guy cornering them in their room and not letting them out until they "give it up" isn't something they should be expected to live with, or that waking up in a frat house with no clothes on and no memory of last night, isn't just something that "just happens".
Women have an impressive double-standard to live with; if they get assaulted or raped, well, obviously they should have known better. But if they assume that a man might try to rape her if they are alone together, or doesn't want to be in a position where she can be overpowered or outnumbered, well, then she's obviously a man-hater/feminist/dyke. Nowhere in either of those equations is the man's behavior held to any standard.
It is nieve to believe that EVERY woman who claims rape really was raped.
The staistics for false claims of rape are in line with false claims for other crimes. (Well, it depends on who you ask and what time period the study in question covers; the numbers seem to swing from 1 percent to 25 percent of claims, with each end of the range having its defenders.) Also, many rapes go unreported, which would make the percentage of false claims vs. actual rapes even smaller still. But of course, any attempt to raise awareness or to encourage women to talk about what happened to them is "blurring the line between 'rape' and 'regret'".
By your reasoning, we should assume that any person who claims they were robbed or assaulted is lying just because some people lie about it, or live in fear that we could be sent to jail by having someone pointing a finger at us and saying "he stole from me" if we don't defend the reputation of accused thieves.
Re:RFIDs can be cloned.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Apparent InsCo greed aside... (Score:2, Insightful)
I.e. they can shift the premium towards liability so it will constitute 80% of total policy premium. In such situation there is no reason to drop collision etc. (because it's almost free)
As result insurance co. overcharges those with minimal insurance (poor), while everybody else pays the same...
Evil...