nav leads thieves to home
 

I know the current buz about thieves breaking into vehicles then using the nav to find the house where the garage door can be opened by the universal remote is not specific to the X5, but I wonder what others think about this.

I think if I change the name from default "home" to the actual address that it still might be easy to locate in the address book. My back-up plan, is that I never leave home without locking the door to the garage and turning on the security alarm.

> I know the current buz about thieves breaking into vehicles then using the nav to find the house where the garage door can be opened by the universal remote is not specific to the X5


I don't have BMW nav, but I assume you can change the names of saved points to anything you want, as I can do with my $200 Garmin. So just change the name from "Home" to "Police" and I suspect they won't go there!

Seriously though, I though stealing a BMW to drive it to the home location and use the remote to open the garage was rather difficult with the encoded keys nowadays. Is it really that likely anyone will be able to bypass the anti-theft measures and then using a stolen vehicle to drive to your home and use the garage door opener? If I was a thief I don't think I'd want to drive a person's vehicle to their house and start stealing from the house, knowing the person could be reporting the theft to the Police at that very moment.


You might want to read this:

http://www.snopes.com/crime/intent/gps.asp

Reminds me of our SCUBA diving trips to Bonaire, most of which is shore diving from a rental car: the locals hide out
and when you are 60 feet down, they rifle the rental car, looking to cop everything you left, including the motel key;
they sprint off to the motel and clean out your room, while you are blowing through a tank of compressed air.

A good alarm is the only way to keep the bad guys out of your house, imo.
Even then, the pros and creative types can get by most any system.
GL,mD

A few months back, I read a local news article about someone who had his MB stolen from valet, then they found his Porsche in his driveway at home and they took that too.

What you should do is set your home address to a nearby street instead. You don't need an exact address for any real reason do you?

Interesting perspective.

BTW, I too have a Garmin now used for rental cars but very much like the additional features of the BMW nav on long trips (4K).

My Honda Accord's system has a code protected home address, you have to know the code to get to the home address. The Japanese are way ahead when it comes to technology, IMHO :D

> you have to know the code to get to the home address


Do you have you vehicle registration in your glove box or console? That's an even quicker way to get a home address!

Or if you have an insurance card in the vehicle with your full name, a quick internet check with a wireless laptop would probably also get your home address.

True, thats why I keep my insurance card in the wallet, but you are right, there are many other ways of getting the home address.

Exactly. Who needs nav. If you steal car why would drive the car to persons home, so that neighbors can see that thieves are driving it. The family at home already knows by then that car is stolen. Sounds stupid to me.

That feature isn't necessary on the current Accord - no one can read the lousy screen in daylight conditions. We skipped the nav system for ours.