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Serious security issue with phone as a key
- Thread starter Kreten
- Start date
JeffK
Well-Known Member
No, why would you have to hit unlock?
I can't believe this thread has gone on for so long. There's no security issue unless your in the habit of leaving your keys in the car and the door unlocked. It's the same in any car, especially cars with advanced keyless entry.
There are different types of FOBs, mainly between keyless ignition vehicles and not. For vehicles that have keyless ignitions, you typically just walk up to the car and pull the door handle, just like the M3 with your phone key.
Other cars that don't have keyless ignition may not have the other proximity features as well and require direct interaction with the FOB.
If my wife left her keys in her BMW x5, it would behave exactly like M3 phone key setup does: anyone could get in a drive it.
Of course, if you left your FOB that requires interaction to unlock, it probably requires interaction to lock it as well... so you've either locked your keys in your car somehow, or you've left it unlocked and we're talking about the same basic scenario.
In all cases, this is user error.
Having messed with this for a week, it makes much more sense now. Turning off BT disabled walk away locking, because BT didn't go out of range (decreasing RSSI over time), it just disappears. So you end up defaulting to the card-only behavior. Walk away locking does not work with the card at all, because the car has no way to know the card walked away.
I disagree with all three of your "stupid" decisions. I love the glass roof, ATT is as good as any other carrier, and I can not tell you how much I love the phone key.
Here's what happened to me once during my trip to Canada: The car, being on crappy AT&T, had no cell signal so the NAV in the car was not working. But my Verizon phone had a good signal, so I was using the phone to navigate, and I had set it where I could see it on that teeny shelf at the front of the center console. I stopped at a convenience store to get something to drink, and without thinking, left the phone in the car. So the car didn't lock. Anybody could have opened the car and taken my phone, or just driven away with the car if they'd known how it worked. Fortunately, this was small-town B.C., Canada.
There were some bigger cities in Canada where the car did have a cell signal, but for most of my trip only my phone had a cell signal, and the car did not.
Had I been in the Prius, the key fob never would have left my pocket. I'd have locked the car by pressing on the button on the door handle.
There were some bigger cities in Canada where the car did have a cell signal, but for most of my trip only my phone had a cell signal, and the car did not.
Had I been in the Prius, the key fob never would have left my pocket. I'd have locked the car by pressing on the button on the door handle.
JeffK
Well-Known Member
*You're
Argh it's only a day back and I can't hit edit. This is a lesson kids, don't drink and post.Here's the difference: The Prius's key fob never has to leave my pocket, so it never leaves my pocket and won't get left in the car. The phone is used for a gazillion other things, including navigation when the car's crappy cell service has no signal.
And since I don't like having to carry my phone everywhere I always used to just leave it in the car. The only reason I had it with me at all was in case I needed to make a call. I am not accustomed to having to check that I have my phone with me. For well over half my life a phone was not something you carried around with you. It was something that sat on a table in your house. And now the damn thing is my car key and next year they're probably going to want to sell me one that makes toast.
dgpcolorado
high altitude member
My experience is that navigation continues to work when the car is out of cell phone range, which happens a lot where I live. Traffic won't work, of course. The navigation map won't paint if you choose a new view or drive out of the current view. However the guidance and navigation will continue to work even without the map background tiles being painted. Navigation and the map view updates are different functions and the former doesn't seem to need a cell phone connection once it is initiated IME.
The problem occurred when I tried to enter a NAV route after an overnight in a small town where there was no cell service. You have to have cell service in order to enter a route. While my Verizon phone had cell service in every little town I passed through, the car, with AT&T, only had service in the major cities while I was in Canada.
The other problem was that I like to be able to see the map context (roads other than the one I'm on) and the car only loads this information when I enter an area. Google Maps on my Verizon phone worked perfectly. The car was a big FAIL for navigation on that trip with its AT&T cell service. Were it not for the phone, I'd have been lost on numerous occasions. Thus the phone sitting up where I could see it while driving, and thus my forgetting to take it with me when I went in to a store.
FWIW, my ancient Garmin has all of North America pre-loaded. Those maps are out of date now, but I don't see why the car cannot load everything within a five-hundred mile radius of me whenever it does have a connection, so that it could display the full map when it does not have a connection. Even here in Spokane, if I drive a bit outside of town, the map will go blank if I have not entered a destination ahead of time.
eladts
Member
You can use your Verizon phone as a hotspot for the car in areas the phone gets service and the car isn't. By default the car disconnects wifi when you are not in park, but you can re-enable it by tapping the LTE icon and connect through your phone while driving.
eladts
Member
Some cars give you a warning when all the doors are closed, the fob is in the car and there is no one in the seats. I'm sure something like that can be added to the Model 3 in a firmware update.
Also, sorry to be pedantic, but fob is not an acronym.
Thanks for that. But it's easier just to use Google Maps on the phone when the car is not getting cell service. Also, I have only 500 MB of data per month. If I use Google Maps on the phone I'm just using data for the map app. If I let the car connect through the phone, I don't know what else the car might be doing. Maybe there happens to be a firmware update and the car sees that it has a wi-fi connection, so it downloads it from my phone and I go way over my data allowance. Or the car has other reasons to connect while it is on wi-fi.
If I had unlimited data I'd probably do what you suggest. But it seems simpler just to use the phone app than to route the car through the phone.
(Sure, I could pay an extra $50 a month and have unlimited data, but I use data so seldom that it seems a waste. Even using the map app doesn't use much data. But letting the car use the phone's data? Who knows?)
Why would I do that when I have Google Maps on my phone??? In fact, I finally bought a smartphone just a couple of years ago because I decided that Google Maps was the app that made the upgrade worth it. And I've been delighted with Google Maps. It is indeed the app that made a smartphone worthwhile to me. (There are other apps I use and love also.)
So now that I have the phone and Google Maps which is always up to date and even has real-time traffic if there's a data connection, why would I ever again buy a stand-alone GPS unit? I got the phone so I could retire the GPS unit. And very happy I did.