Help me identify possible tracking device found in my car

https://gist.github.com/jwbee/90e32362fd24b1a233b882ffa7950616

by jeffbee • 4 years ago

483 253 4 years ago

gist.github.com

xwowsersx2• 4 years ago

Wow. I can't help you identify the device, but curious if you have any ideas as to who might've installed this. Did your car have a previous owner?

jeffbee4• 4 years ago

New car, bought from dealer, who swear they did not install it and are blaming another dealer from whom they acquired the vehicle.

As far as the dealer goes I intend to make a lot of over-the-top demands and threats until they replace the wiring with all-new OEM parts and a lifetime warranty, but I think I'll start from just pointing to California Penal Code 637.7, demanding a completely new vehicle, and seeing what happens.

reaperducer• 4 years ago

New car, bought from dealer, who swear they did not install it and are blaming another dealer from whom they acquired the vehicle.

It's possible. Something like that happened with my wife's car. We only found out about the tracking device when they sent us a bill in the mail to activate the tracking service.

nullfield• 4 years ago

I encourage heavy demands, and talking with an attorney if they so much as twitch about it. “All the warning lights on” in a brand new car is a special hell.

Then, regardless, perhaps file a complaint with the appropriate state agency # they’re probably quite interested in what a prior dealer might’ve done…

Gibbon1• 4 years ago

New car, bought from dealer

Call the automakers regional representative.

NonNefarious2• 4 years ago

Did you finance it?

Found this: https://thriveglobal.com/stories/drivers-need-to-be-aware-th...

But you'd think it'd be more clearly a GPS device.

toomuchtodo• 4 years ago

Have you pulled a Carfax report for the vehicle? What’s the title history look like?

lisper• 4 years ago

I think I'll start from just pointing to California Penal Code 637.7

I would strongly advise not doing that until you can prove that this was in fact a tracking device. I think a remote start/cutoff is much more likely, c.f.:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32040472

kube-system2• 4 years ago

You’re better off just disconnecting it than getting new wiring. Wiring harness replacements are notorious for requiring obscene amounts of interior disassembly, and you might just end up with annoying squeaks and rattles.

AnimalMuppet2• 4 years ago

Did they (or will they) tell you who the other dealer is? If they won't, then maybe the "other dealer" is a fiction to try to make you stop blaming them.

(I would expect that they would be reluctant to name another dealer that was actually innocent, knowing that it could turn into a libel lawsuit.)

duxup• 4 years ago

I've seen people find tracking devices on former rental cars.

mutant• 4 years ago

I've heard of banks, and/or leasing agents install things so they can repo the vehicle even if it's not at a registered location.

sircastor• 4 years ago

I know some lower-end dealerships will install remote disable components on vehicles to disable in event of non-payment. This happened to a friend of mine. I don’t know if it goes as far as to report GPS coordinates.

judge20203• 4 years ago

Utilizing GPS for the repossession tracking has been a thing since at least 2012 https://youtu.be/npw4G1DOqaI

YuccaGloriosa• 4 years ago

Garage door opener? Odometer modifier? Remote kill switch?

TravisLS• 4 years ago

r/whatisthisthing might be your friend here

jeanlucas• 4 years ago

Indeed, there's a larger community over there.

zbird• 4 years ago

Not a car hacker but:

The device uses the car's cellular data peripheral to send this information somewhere.

Maybe somebody can find what that somewhere is, or help with how to go about that.

johnnyo• 4 years ago

Could it possibly be some sort of aftermarket Remote Start?

That’s not a tracking device, and those are pretty common aftermarket additions.

contravariant• 4 years ago

Car starts and runs without it, but every warning light on the dashboard comes on.

Yeah, the simplest explanation is still that it is supposed to be there, but has been spliced in there to save some time and has an as of yet unknown purpose.

pdq• 4 years ago

If you have a loan on the car, it’s quite possible the lender or the dealer installed it.

You can search YouTube for repo tracking devices.

mmastrac• 4 years ago

Looks like a crappy remote starter honestly. Those things butcher the wiring. You'd find something to bypass the ignition lock somewhere on the canbus network as well, I wager.

ktm5j• 4 years ago

You could get some cheapo usb data logger and use sigrock to try and catch/decode whatever is being sent over the CAN bus! Would be fun to see!

willcipriano2• 4 years ago

First hit on DDG for "PL884-200" is a asset tracker: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22PL884-200%22&t=fpas&ia=web

Perhaps this is a part of one of those units? They have "hard wired" as a option on the site, but it's greyed out.

Speculation: the site used to talk about a PL884-200 hardwire kit but they have since stopped selling it.

wildrhythms• 4 years ago

That 'first hit' (to the logistimatics result) appears to not contain the string 'PL884-200' anywhere on the page.

willcipriano2• 4 years ago

That's what my speciation covers. At some point the search engine decided that page is a good result for that string, the content may have shifted since then as it currently isn't, or perhaps someone is back linking to it with "PL884-200" in the href? Either way it's something a dealer would add after market to a car and it has some connection to PL884-200.

repler• 4 years ago

On the off chance it’s meant to do something useful: https://fccid.io/frequency-explorer.php?lower=435&upper=435

banana_giraffe• 4 years ago

I'm far from an expert in this field, but that looks an awful lot like a 3rd part remote start add on.

Here's a tear down of one that looks pretty similar in principle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chw__TwMgdI

irjustin• 4 years ago

Aftermarket remote start.

Tracking devices don't need to be nearly so complicated nor hard wired into the ignition.

If it's a remote kill for a lease/lender then you'd expect some ability to transmit it's location. Why go through all the trouble of installing a remote kill that can't transmit it's location nor actually disable the car (it still works after removal)

[edit]

Going with the KARR "dealer alarm" per other post.

jeffbee4• 4 years ago

Hrmm, must be a master-key type system as stated above because this car comes from Honda with remote start, which is still working after I excised this weird thing.

jowsie• 4 years ago

If you google KARR Honda or KARR Alarm you should find some better information.

I found identical looking devices by using Google Lens and focusing on just the black box with the green button.

https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2016/08/never-buy-car-alar...

https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisit/comments/rnr48t/found_unde...

https://www.reddit.com/r/subaru/comments/7m9dv9/mysterious_b...

morpheuskafka• 4 years ago

How is it allowed for a dealer to cut wires and install a non OEM-approved electronic device onto the CAN bus? This seems like it would void all the manufacturer warranties and potentially create liability for the manufacturer if it malfunctions.

AH4oFVbPT4f8• 4 years ago

Because they didn’t think they would get caught

userbinator3• 4 years ago

This seems like it would void all the manufacturer warranties

That's what the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty... is for.

judge20203• 4 years ago

Manufacturers must prove a modification to a car caused the fault in a product to deny an otherwise-covered warranty issue, regardless of who installed it. As for if this device kills the battery or what-have-you, i'm not sure what sort of liability the dealership is taking.

hedora3• 4 years ago

When we bought a brand new GMC, Dealer A installed a counterfeit backup camera.

Half a tank of gas later, Dealer B claimed the warranty was void because of the camera. We brought it in because the radio kept freaking out and it would drain the battery if left off over night.

There was an active recall for both those issues. Dealer C fixed them by installing a firmware update.

jeffbee4• 4 years ago

Nice, that's exactly the switchgear at least.

honkdaddy• 4 years ago

It's amusing to me that someone would go through the effort of deconstructing it, writing a gist, and posting it on HN before literally just googling "device under steering wheel" and seeing other people posting about the _exact_ same device.

People tend to imagine their lives are more interesting and worthy of surveillance than they really are :)

burrows4• 4 years ago

Yeah, people are just imagining the NSA led global surveillance apparatus.

rocqua3• 4 years ago

He googled the device name, which I would also expect to show up in posts by others.

blakespot• 4 years ago

KARR - Knight Automated Roving Robot

midnitewarrior• 4 years ago

I prefer K.I.T.T.

riffic2• 4 years ago

I wouldn't buy a new car without demanding this to be removed and restored to factory condition at the pre-delivery inspection.

used cars, on the other hand, are a different story. complain to American Honda perhaps? Contact info for anyone's convenience:

https://owners.honda.com/help/customer-relations

American Honda Motor Co., Inc.

Honda Automobile Customer Service

Mail Stop: CHI-5

1919 Torrance Blvd.

Torrance, CA 90501-2746

AmVess• 4 years ago

Remote starter. They are hack jobs to install. 435 MHz is the frequency the remote uses to start the car.

GekkePrutser7• 4 years ago

What is the usecase for a remote starter? I don't really understand why someone would want this. Could even be dangerous if it's left in gear.

nickthegreek• 4 years ago

To heat your car when it’s cold outside, prior to your entry.

shotta• 4 years ago

Living in winter. Preheating the vehicle. (That’s what I use mine for, which is factory installed.)

carom• 4 years ago

Most people in the US do not drive manuals. You can get them in manuals but you have to hack some stuff, and yea, it will stall your car out if you start it in gear. In the US they are largely for convenience so you can heat or cool your car before you go out.

dahdum2• 4 years ago

Cold weather primarily. You need the engine to warm up before driving and it’s much nicer to have the heater warm up the car and loosen ice on the windows.

You can run outside and start the car then come back, as I did growing up in a cold region, but remote start is sooo much nicer.

NikolaNovak• 4 years ago

It's hyper super duper useful in rough climates. Primarily when it's minus 40 outside and you have kids, it's nice to warm up the car slightly before entering it. If you get spoiled, you might then also remote start it when it's plus 40 outside and you want ac to at least start.

Also note that "if it's left in gear" is virtually irrelevant in North America, fwiw - something like under 2 percent of cars here are manual. Vast majority of vehicles and models do not have it as an option.

LorenPechtel• 4 years ago

I've looked at remote start systems. The specs always require an automatic transmission. The use case is simple: Today's high is 111F (44C), if the car is parked in the sun it's going to be a lot warmer than that inside. In those conditions we typically open the doors and wait a little bit before entering--using a remote start to turn the AC on a minute or two before getting in would be nice.

forinti• 4 years ago

What an interesting coincidence, I was just watching a video on how people keep their cars warm in Yakutia, and this is the sort of thing they use.

crikeyjoe• 4 years ago

How about the tracking device I'm your pocket?

gpas• 4 years ago

If the car is new ask Honda if the device should be there, if not ask the dealer a new car. I would never feel safe driving a car tampered by who know who.

You say it's a 2020 car, how many miles have you driven with the unknown device plugged and doing its job? Crazy stuff.

osamagirl69• 4 years ago

Looks like a dealer installed 'alarm system'. I bought a mazda in 2011 which had a similar system, as best as I can tell the dealer installs them as asset trackers for cars on the lot and then tried to upsell it to me as an 'alarm system'. Its a bit sketchy that they didn't mention it to you when you bought the car...

The 433MHz is likely a keyfob receiver (and possibly transmitter to spoof the original key).

djbusby• 4 years ago

Time for SDR inspection?

https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433

yellowapple• 4 years ago

Any chance you could add a photo of the full board?

Looks like an aftermarket alarm system (and some of the other comments seem to confirm that).

throwaway742• 4 years ago

It's an aftermarket car alarm and the button is the valet button. Pretty stupid to install one in such a new car as the car itself likely has better security than the alarm (exception of KIA/Hyndai).

dapids• 4 years ago

I've seen this quite a bit from dealerships that purchase rental vehicles from suppliers after they've become out of date, or the rental company wants to offload them. The rental company won't bother removing the tracking/remote start bundle, and the dealer will happily sell it none the wiser, or worse, as a added feature.

userbinator3• 4 years ago

When I got home I looked under the dash and straight away I could see someone other than Honda had been in here. The first thing I saw was this surface-mounted switch that doesn't belong there.

Does anyone else find it odd that he just bought a car and effectively started using it without going over it thoroughly and familiarising himself with what controls it contains? Then again, my experience has been with far older and simpler vehicles, so perhaps newer ones are so complex that people have given up spending any time to become acquainted with them.

sokoloff2• 4 years ago

You acquaint yourself with the underside of the dash of a new-to-you car before driving it?

I’m quite interested in cars (do all the repairs in our household except body, paint, and tires) and I’ve never looked under the dash before driving off, unless I was attaching a scan tool on a used car I was buying.

userbinator3• 4 years ago

Not before, but certainly after --- and certainly some models have controls like the hood release as well as adjustments for the steering wheel and pedal position there.

jeffbee4• 4 years ago

Ha, well blame me for that I guess, but none of this stuff is visible from a normal seated position. You have to crawl under the steering wheel to see any of it.

When buying a factory-new car I do not ordinarily rip off the dashboard trim panels to see if the wiring has been tampered with.

ineedasername2• 4 years ago

No, this was not in a location you would see during normal end-user operation of the car given that most users will never do much more than wash the car and refill fluids. Neither is it expected behavior by an official dealership to install undisclosed components. Especially when the salesperson will (in my experience) do a pretty thorough tour of the car, under the hood, obscure storage compartments etc, and the aftermarket component in this post would not have been in a locations reviewed as part of that.

If this was a desktop computer I certainly would expect even a moderately knowledgeable user to open a computer direct for the manufacturer or retailer before using it to see if there were unauthorized components present.

chrisseaton• 4 years ago

Do you literally crawl under the steering wheel of a car before you drive it? Why?

avalys3• 4 years ago

No, I don't find it odd. All the critical controls are in basically the same place in every car. Steering wheel, pedals, turn signals, etc. The rest I can figure out as needed. No need to study in advance.

ineedasername2• 4 years ago

It's part of a new public relations & civic service initiative offered by the NSA. If you forget where you parked your car all you have to do is whisper near your phone (Even if it's off!) "Hey, NSA guys, where's my car?"

They'll honk the horn and, if necessary, send a micro drone to your location that you can follow to it if it's too far away to hear the horn or you're hearing impaired.

mrslave• 4 years ago

Is there a community for those interested in removing factory tracking from newer model cars? A recent discussion here mentioned how prevalent they are in vehicles made in the last decade. (No link, sorry.)

krnlpnc• 4 years ago

It looks like a remote starter to me

avalys3• 4 years ago

So, long story short, it's not a tracking device, it's an aftermarket alarm system?

Guess what folks: with few exceptions, no one cares about tracking you. Enough with the paranoia already.

xeromal• 4 years ago

Yeah, and this thing probably didn't appear overnight. It's probably always been there since he's had the car.

voganmother422• 4 years ago

Tracking has gotten trivial, airtags are being used this way pretty regularly.

Try respawning as a woman and see how far this few exceptions attitude gets you?

avalys3• 4 years ago

The author of the linked post is not a woman.

paulgb• 4 years ago

Although this does appear to be an alarm system, there are several links in these comments to evidence of dealers using tracking devices on financed vehicles. It’s not inconceivable that one of these devices could end up on a vehicle bought outright.

andai• 4 years ago

Damn, is that legal?

pixl972• 4 years ago

with few exceptions, no one cares about tracking you.

HN is one of those places with a higher than average number of people that groups would be interested in tracking.

chrsig2• 4 years ago

what's leading you to that conclusion?

oceanplexian• 4 years ago

I had this exact system. If anyone is interested in removing it:

It has a bunch of "fake wires" acting as taps into the wiring harness, and it detects if you remove a tap and then trips trip a relay where it cuts the ignition wire that is rerouted through the unit. So I removed the device, and put the ignition wire back together and the car was back to normal. I think if OP's car still has warning lights go off, he likely nicked some of the other wires inadvertently, or broke them while pulling the taps out.

w0mbat• 4 years ago

Amazingly paranoid post about what is obviously a car alarm.

_zzaw• 4 years ago

Obvious? I wouldn't have known what the hell that was. Going by the comments, it looks like a lot of other folks weren't sure what it was either.

Don't be so quick to put other people down. It's not good to have that kind of thing in a community.

chrsig2• 4 years ago

not a car person here: what make it obvious that it's a car alarm?

par1970• 4 years ago

What about the guys who thought it was obviously a remote starter?

somenewaccount1• 4 years ago

I'm guessing it's remote ignition, triggered by a fob key. Not all that suspicious really

thrdbndndn2• 4 years ago

Warning: all photos shot by Apple iPhone SE in your gist have GPS info.

So.. yeah, this post may expose your location better than this device.

mdp20212• 4 years ago

Hint that suggests a "world" where people keep the GPS connection on as standard practice. Which is perplexing on so many levels, not last that the GPS is one of the most energy costly services I know - consideration relevant between impact on battery life and general "keeping the lights on and the engine running when away".

thrdbndndn2• 4 years ago

They mostly don't really use actual GPS. Instead they use AGPS [1] tech that uses nearby hotspots, cellar signal triangulation etc. to get your location.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GNSS

aspectmin• 4 years ago

Ahh. Looks familiar. A dealer in the PNW installed one of these (without our knowledge) in a Honda CRV we purchased. Something about anti theft and vehicle recovery by finance, for all the cars on their lot.

The car had all sorts of crazy power problems. Smart display would randomly crash, interior lights wouldn’t work, just… flakey.

Called the dealer and demanded they remove this. Electrical problems went away instantly.

Super frustrating.

fargle• 4 years ago

Previous discussion of another device from the same crappy vendor:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30833566

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30833566#30838294

I discovered it when my new car started having the same issues you saw.

NOTE: it's somewhere between a scam and a crappy business practice. Here in southern california it's by no means only used cars or shady financing. The dealers install them on all the cars to keep track of their own inventory. Then they try to sell it to you as a kind of lojack for $$$$. If you are smart and decline, they just deactivate the unit (stop paying for the service), but do you think that they remove it? or repair the wiring?

sgtnoodle2• 4 years ago

They put them in so that they can use a single key fob to open up all the cars in the lot. There's a socket that accepts a module. When they sell the car, they pop out their key fob module and pop in the "security system" blinking LED module and try to upsell you $1K for the privilege of having your wire harness butchered.

fortran772• 4 years ago

This is the most accurate answer in this thread. Toyota dealers in Northern California did this to me twice on new cars. (A third party autosound guy removed it and fixed the harness for me)

Even though we always pay in full for cars, the dealer has you talk to the finance guy who will try to sell you useless addons like undercoating and an “alarm system” which has already been butchered into the car by the dealer. (If you buy it they would stick a key module with a blinking red light under the dash somewhere, but most of the circuit is already there.)

torginus• 4 years ago

Anti theft and Vehicle recovery look strange next to each other.

ClumsyPilot2• 4 years ago

A dealer in the PNW installed one of these (without our knowledge) in a Honda CRV we purchased

Why do I get the feeling that If i did that to the car I sold privately, I would be in jail really fast?

chaz6• 4 years ago

That sounds like something that would invalidate an insurance policy and exposes the dealer to all sorts of liability.

felipesoc• 4 years ago

This reminds me of that time a guy on Reddit found a tracker on his car and ended up being FBI's.

https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/dmh5s/does_this...

https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/doe17/update_to...

lostlogin• 4 years ago

That’s a fascinating read. Thanks.

worker7674242• 4 years ago

Now they just ask your cell phone company.

octoberfranklin• 4 years ago

... and claim that they got the data from "apps".

Really, we swear. But we can't tell you which ones. Maybe the apps running on the cell towers.

incompatible2• 4 years ago

I'm guessing that nearly everybody knows this by now, and for those occasional times when burying a body or whatever, would leave the phone at home.

olalonde• 4 years ago

Wow, that's insane. I thought those "I'm definitely bugged now" / "I'm on a list now" comments on Reddit were just jokes but apparently not.

autotech• 4 years ago

I’m a technician at a dealership, I can think of a couple of possibilities. First off, I think it’s an add-on remote start module. It’s possible that a different customer wanted one installed and then the deal fell through. Or they got the stock numbers mixed up and the tech installed it on the wrong car. That would explain no paperwork associated with the install. It could have been a “dealer trade” where your dealer trucked a car in from a different dealer. It’s not a huge deal, rip that stuff out and restore the stock wiring. We get 1 - 2 hours labor for that. It’s a cakewalk.

AtlasBarfed2• 4 years ago

This is probably to aid repossession, I saw similar discussions on jalopnik which means it was on Reddit cars inevitably

AtlasBarfed2• 4 years ago

This is probably to aid repossession, I saw similar discussions on jalopnik which means it was on Reddit cars inevitably

Dealers suck, I know everyone hates Tesla but they showed the path to getting rid of dealers

intrasight2• 4 years ago

I want to point out something. Even though this device is/was most likely innocuous, it should also be clear that such non-factory, seemingly innocuous devices could easily contain and cloak something of concern. Quick googling finds for example: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...

altano• 4 years ago

That story and the followups have always been and remain extremely suspect. https://www.google.com/search?q=bloomberg+supermicro+story

bschwindHN• 4 years ago

Wasn't that Bloomberg article found to be false? Don't take my word for it, look it up, but I remember hearing Bloomberg take a big reputation hit after that one.

deathanatos• 4 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_News#Suspected_fake_...

intrasight2• 4 years ago

I just copied the first thing I found. Thanks for the update. My point still stands. We have to be increasingly careful about accessories we plug in. Here's perhaps a more relevant example: https://counterespionage.com/malicious-usb-cables/

josephcsible• 4 years ago

The second picture at https://www.ramforum.com/threads/what-is-this.187308/post-26... is rather concerning to me. Does this thing being installed irreversibly damage the car in some way, such that it will never be drivable again if you fully remove it, so if you don't want it anymore, you need to keep it forever anyway, just with their "de-activation module" inserted?

CodeWriter23• 4 years ago

Where’d you buy it? If from loanshark used car lot, it’s probably a remote shutoff to be used if you miss payments.

fulafel• 4 years ago

If you are in EU and/or a civilized country you should probably notify your national privacy / GDPR responsible ombudsman.

xwowsersx2• 4 years ago

On a forum, someone identified this is a "KARR" aftermarket alarm system and included a pic of, what appears to be, the same device. https://www.ramforum.com/threads/what-is-this.187308/#post-2...

SergeAx2• 4 years ago

GitHub required me to log in to see the content on this link. Are they going all the way of Facebook, Twitter and other shady patterns practitioners?

Update: was unable to reproduce, maybe an a/b test or security check.

ehnto2• 4 years ago

That's strange. I did not have to. I wonder if it was based on your user agent, or some anti-crawler detection?

I have noticed this with a lot of websites recently, things like Twitter and Instagram only sometimes ask me to log in to view things. Reddit as well, will be happy to show me some article, then later that same day it'll ask me to log in.

SergeAx2• 4 years ago

You are right. I logged out, and then proceeded to view the gist without logging in. Maybe they left some tracking cookie after log out (like device id), or they invalidated my previous session and triggered login on that invalidated session.

the_only_human• 4 years ago

_Microft• 4 years ago

Just in case you want to look at the transmission with an RTL-SDR or something like that: it transmits on 433.92MHz for an an external reference of 6.7458MHz. It's on page 8 of the CY800 datasheet.

vcryan• 4 years ago

Most of the time, when people think law enforcement is tracking their vehicle location, it turns out to be that the person's wife is aware that they are cheating, and is building a case.

carabiner• 4 years ago

Puzzled at the upvotes. Like everyone says, this is a run of the mill aftermarket alarm system installed by a dealership. It's the car version of crapware. This is not a tracker.

riffic2• 4 years ago

blame your stealership, and don't buy cars from them unless they remove this garbage at the pre-delivery inspection

tombrossman2• 4 years ago

OP, check your camera settings and maybe replace the images with ones containing less metadata. No contact info in your bio or I would have privately notified you. Privacy is difficult, so good luck to you. (edited to make comment less specific)

greggsy• 4 years ago

Ironic that they tracked themselves, but less overt ways of informing OP…

tombrossman2• 4 years ago

Thanks and good point.

jmartin2683• 4 years ago

It’s a car alarm.

Kids these days…

Help me identify possible tracking device found in my car

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