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Watch Dozens of Cars Go Haywire, Apparently Due to Signal Jammers

Cars honked relentlessly, and their bewildered owners stood around the full parking lot, unable tao enter their vehicles.

Cars honked relentlessly, and their bewildered owners stood around the full parking lot, unable tao enter their vehicles. The trumpet of another car erupted. Shortly after, the whistle of one more car alarm went off.

"Someone's jamming the locks," Autumn DePoe-Hughes, an eye witness, commented in a video she uploaded to Facebook.

In recent years, reports have surfaced of criminals using various jamming devices and other technical techniques to break into cars with minimal fuss. And the effect of that appears to have just been caught on camera in Manchester, UK.

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DePoe-Hughes wasn't able to close the trunk of her car, as it is secured by an electronic lock, she told The Register.

"It was very eerie and there were so many confused people trying to their doors to no avail," she continued on Facebook. "Someone else had complete control over all of our cars for well over half an hour."

It would appear that potential thieves tried to jam the locks of cars in the parking lot, and managed to set off car alarms instead. The Great Manchester Police did not immediately respond to Motherboard's questions, including whether any crimes were reported in relation to the latest incident. Also, it's worth remembering that this might have just been a prank by someone who purchased a jammer.

Late last year, the Manchester Evening News reported on the trend of thieves using technology to help them steal vehicles. The more common tactic is the use of a signal jammer, bought online for around £30, which sends out a radio frequency as the victim attempts to remotely lock their vehicle. The frequency blocks the signal from the victim's car fob, and the door remains unlocked.

Other techniques include signal relaying, which involves criminals capturing a vehicle's radio transmission, bouncing that to a device held by an accomplice who is then standing near the victim and can pick up their frequency from their fob, and then unlocking the car, according to the Manchester Evening News. Finally, modern cars ship with ports for accessing their computer systems, which can be compromised as Motherboard has previously reported.

In fact, this sort of thing has been going on since at least 2012, with the Telegraph noting at the time that over 1,000 high performance cars had been stolen in London using the methods over a year.

Criminals are always going to use technology to their advantage. Whether that's Mexican cartels making their own communication networks, or drug dealers advertising their wares on the dark web, if it can make their crimes more profitable, faster, easier, or lower the chance of them getting caught, people breaking the law are going to adapt whatever they can.