Technology analyst Ian Fogg watched his car being driven away on his doorbell camera. He had an Apple Airtag hidden inside it, and the manufacturer, Kia, could see its live location. More than three months later, the car is still missing. “This car was incredibly easy to hack but incredibly difficult to track,” Fogg told BBC News. “It shouldn’t be this easy to nick a car when they cost an order of magnitude more than a phone and have similar radio technology.”
Fogg, an analyst at FDM CCS Insight, was abroad in March when his phone pinged to say he had lost access to the Kia Connect app. Thieves had broken into the vehicle without keys and disconnected his phone via the entertainment system – an unsecured process designed to let new owners take over. He watched the car drive off on his video doorbell. For a short while he tracked it via the Airtag, until the thieves located it because it was making a noise – a feature introduced by Apple to combat stalking.
“Thieves stole a car tracked live by Kia, but UK law blocked police use of its location data.”
He turned to Kia Connect, which on its website advises customers to contact it in the event of theft. But when Fogg did, he was told he would have to fill in a form every time he requested the car’s location. He did this eight times, and each time he did not receive the location until 24 to 48 hours after the car had been recorded there. “Kia Connect is a customer convenience feature, not a certified security vehicle tracker,” the firm told the BBC. “Therefore, it does not provide live‑tracking functionality for stolen vehicles.” The company added that UK law – specifically GDPR – prevented the Connect function being used to live track vehicles.
Car safety firm Thatcham Research warned there was a “genuine and growing gap” between consumer expectation and the technical reality of so-called connected car features. For Fogg, that gap has meant a stolen car that remains unrecovered, despite three independent tracking methods all failing. He asked: why is it so easy to hack a car that costs tens of thousands of pounds, yet so hard to find it once it’s gone?