Faraday bags protect supercars from surge in keyless car theft

Owning a supercar is a dream for many people but imagine the feeling when you leave the house to get into your brand-new sports car, only to find an empty space where the car should be.

As technology advances, it would be easy to think that it should harder for thieves to steal expensive cars than in the past. But a recent surge in high profile vehicle thefts proves otherwise, with keyless car thefts on the rise.

Modern vehicles can be opened and started with just the push of a button and according to Tracker, a stolen vehicle recovery company, 92 per cent of cars last year were taken without keys. [1]

In fact, the modern car thief is more likely to employ technology than a crowbar to gain access to vehicles. As a result, they are likely to be gone in 30 seconds. No smashed glass, no prised open doors, no fuss.

So, how can car owners guard against this? The solution is to keep keys in a Faraday bag. Used by intelligence agents to guard against the stealing of state secrets, these bags are a surprisingly low cost but effective option to keep your dream car safe.

Faraday bags were named after the inventor of the Faraday cage. They work by blocking RF signals from being sent and received by an electronic device such as a mobile phone, car key or laptop. A Faraday bag, much like the Faraday cage, stops signals in their tracks with the materials that the bag is made from. The most common materials include multiple layers of various metals, such as copper, aluminium and static dissipative polyethene.

Car owners considering purchasing Faraday bags should take note of advice from Durham Police[2], which urged owners of keyless entry cars to protect themselves from theft when the crime trend emerged as far back as 2017.

Criminals manipulate the vulnerabilities of the keyless system by capturing the signal from the car’s fob and fooling the vehicle into recognising the keys are nearby, so that it can be opened, started and driven away. But keeping keys in a Faraday bag will protect cars from tech-savvy criminals.

It’s also worth noting that Faraday bags are used for a variety of other purposes, including to prevent police officers from being digitally tracked or followed, by intelligence officers to stop devices being remotely wiped and by military intelligence to halt the remote detonation of improvised explosive devices, so they come with a strong pedigree.

However, they can also be used to prevent access to digital devices during travel, to block access to IDs and passports and to protect bank and credit cards.

A leading supplier is FaradayBag.com[3] and the products come in a range of sizes to shield different devices. These are widely available online starting at around £10 and are a definite must-have in the defence against keyless car theft.

Car Buyer[4] published a recent review of the best Faraday bags and road tested the products. Its verdict was that the best signal blocker was the Defender, a Faraday bag that’s big enough to accommodate other items too. Both the Disklabs KS1 and the Ecence were close behind it. Owners of supercars and indeed anyone with a keyless entry car are advised to take this simple and cost-effective step.

Faraday bags are available to purchase from many online retailers.