Worrying thought,

[miniellis]

Alot of cars seem to be getting stolen from forum users,
Now I had a worrying thought earlier that are car theifs using the forum in a way to locate these? Or even narrow it down to a town or specific area to the go and hunt them out?

Keep safe,
Hannah xx

[Deleted]

I think it's more that forum users are the ones most likely to post about thefts of their cars on the forum. As long as people are pretty vague about where they live, the theifs should have no harder a job locating a specific car than if they scouted out an area on foot/in a car.

This is an important point to raise, but I think most forum users are sensible about identifying marks and locations when it comes to updates.

[crazymonkey]

so a good tip is, if you can take pics of your cars away from your home address. they cant see where its kept every night then

[a73uk]

Something I`ve also noticed is the amount of plate cloning going on, like that green J 4x4 seen towing that Cossy that has been seen a couple of times with plates off of different cars.

This is a rising problem now with the advent of ANPR, you could have plates off a Mini on an arctic, yet it wouldnt flag up in a passing police car if the `donor` has MOT, tax & insurance & if its seen in dense traffic the coppers unlikely to twig its come up as a Mini, assuming it flags the car type too...

Its even easier if you`ve got a common car, you`ve got a silver Golf TDi, MOT failure & no tax, you go on ebay/gumtree/golf forum, look for a silver Golf with long MOT & tax, preferably at the other end of the country, then order a pair of plates off ebay & bung em on your MOT failure... could it be any easier?

One of my friends was hit by a Merk van last year, writing his Mums Audi A3 off in the process, it all sounded fishy, & when I put the vans reg details in ebay it came up as a Micra... the amazing thing is, the police did stop at the accident & after checking no one was injured, they drove off!

My Mums Volvo, Dads van, brothers Fiat & friends Polo have ALL had their plates stolen overnight in the last year too.

This is why I ALWAYS blank out the plates on my cars online, I advise you lot to do the same...

[BenzBoy]

I'm pretty sure that thieves do look at forums to find cars to steal, although I dare say it's more the high value cars to steal to order. Not that we all shouldn't be careful

One thing to beware of is that photos taken with some cameras and smartphones can record the GPS location in the EXIF data. This will then give anyone who wants to know the location of your pride and joy.

[akku]

I used to be big on car audio and people on car audio forums can be very protective of this kind of data for the obvious reason. "Here's a photo of my Merc c220 with £15K worth of stereo in it and here is where I live. Please see my build thread for tips on how to get it all out easily"