A key fob mystery to solve.

[Rain Man]

So I had a rental car on a business trip, and the rental car was doing well. It was a newish Chevrolet Malibu. At some point a few days ago, I pulled into a hotel parking lot. I'm not sure if it's relevant, but the hotel was on a Native American reservation.

Boom.

The turnoff was weird, and I got a message on the instrument panel that the car did not detect a key fob. This is problematic for a variety of reasons.

The logical conclusion is that the battery died. I'm not a handy guy, but with the help of youtube I figured out how to change it. I was lucky that the hotel was next door to a grocery store that carried that type of battery.

I went up to my hotel room, switched the battery out, and went downstairs to test it. As I was walking toward the car, the car alarm started going off on the vehicle next to mine, which was a newish Nissan SUV.

A guy got out of the Nissan. "Sorry about the noise," he said. "I pulled in here and parked, and my key fob died, and I can't figure out how to fix it."

At that point I tested mine and it didn't work, either. I was able to pilot it back to the rental car agency by using a secret trick that I learned on youtube. It involved removing a piece of trim from the door and putting the dead fob in a specific spot in the car, and it was black magic.

The rental car woman seemed like a longtime rental veteran, and she was friendly. She noticed that the car had 2,000 miles on it and said there's no way that the battery should have died. I told her about the Nissan next to mine, and we puzzled over what happened, and if the two failures were related. It seems really odd that two key fobs on two adjacent cars would fail as they were both parking.

What are your theories?

[FlaChief58]

Originally Posted by Vladimir_Kyrilytch

I was once on a flight to Vegas with several legitimate, from a reservation 'Native Americans'. We drank several of those little airplane 1 ounce hard liquor bottles and became friendly. I asked them in confidence what they prefer to be called - Native American is the US thing but in Canada it is First Nations, and of course Indians is a term too. They laughed at me and said dont overthink it. We call ourselves Indians, we always have in our lifetimes, so Indians is fine.

Until an actual Indian corrects me on that, and not white people with big hearts, I'm gonna keep on callin em Indians.

They prefer the term fire water. Lucky you didnt get scalped

[Rainbarrel]

The Chevy and the Nissan got anti-frisky

[Couch-Potato]

Originally Posted by Baby Lee

I wonder if someone was cruising parking lots trying to spoof fobs.

There's not a lot of technical information on how each system operates, for obvious reasons, but the general sense is there is a range of radio frequencies that cycle and both the car and fob have to stay in sync with.

Thus if you push keys on your fob out of range too many times [maybe a dozen maybe two], your fob gets out of sync with the cycle sequence of the car and the two need to be re-paired.

Maybe someone thinks they have a gadget that can cycle through enough frequencies fast enough around enough cars, they can snag a 'hit' and sync with a car that isn't theirs.

You used to be able to do something similar much easier with garage door openers, that have much less sophisticated cycling algorithms and much less range of cycled frequencies, particularly if bunches of residences all had the same brand opener. Kids would drive down a residential street pushing their own opener to see if any garages opened.

Maybe someone's getting a little more aggressive with this because both Honda and Tesla have had recent problems with potentially having their fob algorithm hacked.

And maybe whatever they're trying failed to give them assess to your vehicle, but succeeded in throwing your vehicle's cycle schedule off of sync with your fob.

This. I also wonder if it wasn't the guy that pulled in next and verbally confirmed with the OP that his key fob wasn't working. I had a rental car stolen recently and was told that they're targets for theft.

[TambaBerry]

They have some type of device that kills the fob.

"I was lucky that the hotel was next door to a grocery store that carried that type of battery."

No regular grocery store carries those batteries. It's a money making scheme.

[Bugeater]

I like the word fob.

[Abba-Dabba]

This seems like a question that would be posed to prospective law enforcement types by the govt. It's a mystery wrapped inside an enigma. Not even the people responsible know.

[Otter]

What's a "fob"?

[Donger]

Thieves trying to hack the ISM band.

[BigRichard]

[hometeam]

SKINWALKER RANCH

[Spott]

A little research on Google shows there are devices that can be used to disable your key fobs, making it easier for thieves to break into/steal cars.

[threebag]

Skinwalker Ranch?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinwalker_Ranch

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Spott

A little research on Google shows there are devices that can be used to disable your key fobs, making it easier for thieves to break into/steal cars.

Originally Posted by Donger

Thieves trying to hack the ISM band.

Originally Posted by Couch-Potato

This. I also wonder if it wasn't the guy that pulled in next and verbally confirmed with the OP that his key fob wasn't working. I had a rental car stolen recently and was told that they're targets for theft.

Originally Posted by Baby Lee

I wonder if someone was cruising parking lots trying to spoof fobs.

There's not a lot of technical information on how each system operates, for obvious reasons, but the general sense is there is a range of radio frequencies that cycle and both the car and fob have to stay in sync with.

Thus if you push keys on your fob out of range too many times [maybe a dozen maybe two], your fob gets out of sync with the cycle sequence of the car and the two need to be re-paired.

Maybe someone thinks they have a gadget that can cycle through enough frequencies fast enough around enough cars, they can snag a 'hit' and sync with a car that isn't theirs.

You used to be able to do something similar much easier with garage door openers, that have much less sophisticated cycling algorithms and much less range of cycled frequencies, particularly if bunches of residences all had the same brand opener. Kids would drive down a residential street pushing their own opener to see if any garages opened.

Maybe someone's getting a little more aggressive with this because both Honda and Tesla have had recent problems with potentially having their fob algorithm hacked.

And maybe whatever they're trying failed to give them assess to your vehicle, but succeeded in throwing your vehicle's cycle schedule off of sync with your fob.

I was kind of wondering this. In fact, that's the reason that I took off the trim piece so I could lock and unlock the door manually. A dead fob meant that I couldn't lock the car, and while I didn't have anything inside it to steal, I wondered if someone was looking to steal the whole car. I initially figured I'd just leave it unlocked since I wasn't sure what to do, but youtube showed me how to get the trim piece off and use the manual key.

[neech]

Originally Posted by Vladimir_Kyrilytch

I was once on a flight to Vegas with several legitimate, from a reservation 'Native Americans'. We drank several of those little airplane 1 ounce hard liquor bottles and became friendly. I asked them in confidence what they prefer to be called - Native American is the US thing but in Canada it is First Nations, and of course Indians is a term too. They laughed at me and said dont overthink it. We call ourselves Indians, we always have in our lifetimes, so Indians is fine.

Until an actual Indian corrects me on that, and not white people with big hearts, I'm gonna keep on callin em Indians.

You had fire water with them now you need to smoke'm peace pipe.

[Spott]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I was kind of wondering this. In fact, that's the reason that I took off the trim piece so I could lock and unlock the door manually. A dead fob meant that I couldn't lock the car, and while I didn't have anything inside it to steal, I wondered if someone was looking to steal the whole car. I initially figured I'd just leave it unlocked since I wasn't sure what to do, but youtube showed me how to get the trim piece off and use the manual key.

According to one of the YouTube videos, you can supposedly wrap your key fob in aluminum foil and it will block this from happening. But it seems that the aluminum would also block the signal coming from your key.