Ian Fogg watched his car being driven away via his video doorbell. He had an Apple Airtag hidden inside, and the Kia Connect service that showed its live location. But nearly four months later, he still has not retrieved his vehicle.
Fogg, a technology analyst at FDM CCS Insight, was abroad in March when his phone pinged to say he no longer had access to the Kia Connect app. Thieves had broken into the vehicle without the keys and disconnected his phone via the entertainment system — an unsecured process designed to make it easier for new owners to take over. For a short while, he tracked the car using an Airtag, until the thieves found it and discarded it because it was making a noise, a feature introduced by Apple to combat stalking.
“Kia refused to live-track a stolen car despite having its location, blaming UK law, says analyst Ian Fogg.”
When he contacted Kia, the company told him he would have to fill in a form every time he requested the car's location. He did this eight times, and each time the location did not arrive until 24–48 hours after the car had been recorded there. "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."
Kia told the BBC that UK law prevented the Connect function from being used to live track vehicles, advising customers to use it for "convenience" rather than security. "Kia Connect is a customer convenience feature, not a certified security vehicle tracker," the firm said. "Therefore, it does not provide live‑tracking functionality for stolen vehicles. Release of location details of a vehicle via Kia Connect is possible, however this must be done in full compliance with all applicable laws, in particular GDPR, and the authorities to minimise risk to the customer."
Car safety firm Thatcham Research warned of a "genuine and growing gap" between consumer expectation and the technical reality of connected car features. Fogg's story serves as a cautionary tale of how tech can promise security but cannot necessarily be relied upon in a crisis.