Most people assume that if they still have their car key, their vehicle is safe. It’s a fair assumption and for many years, that’s exactly how it worked. No key meant no access. No access meant no theft. Simple. The reality has shifted a bit over time.
We now regularly speak to drivers across Norfolk who are completely caught off guard by how a vehicle can be taken without any obvious signs of entry. No smashed windows or forced locks, just… gone! And in many cases, the key is still sitting exactly where it was left the night before. So what’s actually going on?
A lot of it comes down to how modern car keys work. If your vehicle has keyless entry or push-button start, the system is designed to detect your key automatically when it is nearby. You don’t need to press anything. You just walk up, open the door, and start the engine. It can be incredibly convenient and most of the time it works as intended.
The problem is that the signal your key emits doesn’t just exist when you’re holding it. It can still be detected when the key is inside your house, on a hallway table, or sitting in a coat pocket by the door. This is where relay theft comes into play.
Rather than breaking into the car, the approach is to “borrow” the signal from your key and pass it over to the vehicle. Once that signal reaches the car, it reacts as if the key is present. The doors unlock and the ignition will activate. From that point on, the vehicle can be driven away as normal.
It’s quiet, it’s quick, and it doesn’t leave behind the kind of evidence people typically expect to see after a theft. We’ve come across situations where the only change needed to prevent it would have been moving the key a bit further away from the front door. That said, keyless systems aren’t the only thing to think about.
More traditional keys bring a different kind of risk. Lost keys, shared spares, or older keys that have changed hands can, over time, leave a vehicle exposed without the owner realising it. From the car's perspective, any programmed key is still valid until it’s removed. This is often where people get caught out.
Replacing a key solves the immediate inconvenience - you can get back into your car, lock it, and drive it. Everything may feel normal again, but if the original key is still out there somewhere, nothing has really changed in terms of the security of your vehicle. That’s why we sometimes recommend rekeying rather than just replacing.
Rekeying goes a step further. It removes all existing keys from the system and resets the locks so that only the new keys will work. If a key has been stolen, copied, or simply gone missing in uncertain circumstances, it’s the most reliable way to shut that risk down completely.
For anyone using a van for work, this becomes even more important. A vehicle is one thing, but a vehicle full of tools is another. We regularly deal with vans where the value inside far outweighs the value of the van itself. Once access has been gained, it does not take long for everything inside to disappear as well. In those caes, we tend to look at the bigger picture.
Key security is part of it, but physical security plays a role too. Adding secondary locks like deadlocks or slamlocks can create an additional barrier that isn’t reliant on the vehicle's electronics. It gives you a second line of defence if someone does attempt to force access to your vehicle.
None of this is intended to try and make things sound worse than they actually are. The vast majority of vehicles are not targeted and for the majority of drivers, this never becomes an issue. But the situations we do see usually come down to small, preventable gaps in security rather than anything extreme. A key left too close to the door. A spare key that can no longer be accounted for. A missing key that’s been replaced, but not removed from the system.
Once you are aware of those things, it becomes relatively easy to manage. If you’re ever unsure about the security of your vehicle, it’s always worth getting a second opinion. We can check whether your current keys are still the only ones that work with your vehicle, talk through whether rekeying makes sense, and make sure everything is set up as it should be.
In most cases, it’s a lot more straightforward than people expect - and a lot quicker to put right than dealing with the aftermath later on.