<p>"The Texas Auto Center dealership in Austin installs GPS devices that can prevent cars from starting. The system is used to repossess cars when buyers are overdue on payments, said Jeremy Norton, a controller at the dealership where Ramos-Lopez worked. Car horns can be activated when repo agents go to collect vehicles and believe the owners are hiding them"</p>
<p>This from an article in Yahoo news about an employee who activated this device in hundreds of peoples cars for the fun of it. So your car is at work and suddenly the horn goes off and you can't start it. Or are you driving down the highway?</p>
<p>I am assuming this is legal. If it is legal it shouldn't be.
Must be in the fine print.</p>
<p>I agree it must be in the fine print somewhere. Big brother is getting scarier…what’s next gps locators in our clothing in case we don’t pay our Macy’s bill!</p>
<p>This just has to be for people with questionable credit. Borrowers that qualify for AAA paper would not have to endure this, or if they did, it would be from their own lack of diligence in not shopping around. People with questionable credit will sign up to this, if only because they likely will receive financing they otherwise would not receive.</p>
<p>wow…didn’t know they did this stuff. We always pay cash here…that means used cars. But if I did finance I at least would want to know that this stuff was in the car. It’s kind of like the laptop scandal in lower merion…at least tell people what you’re doing! </p>
<p>Anyway, I saw a documentary on Repo Men a while back. What an eye opener. These guys ■■■■■ around repossessing cars while most of us are sleeping - they’re not guys you want to see outside! But bottom line, the BANK (or dealer) owns the car if you’re financing it. Folks should remember that.</p>
<p>A few yrs ago, I was laying in bed and heard a diesel truck, I saw it pull up into the backyard of my neighbors, and thought it was strange, but since they had horses, I thought maybe they are taking them to a show and want to drive when there is no other traffic. NOPE…they were repossessing the horses!</p>
<p>A few days later another truck appeared and their wooden fort was gone…3 months later their locks were changed and the house was foreclosed.</p>
<p>If you think the GPS system is scary how about RFID tags with GPS receivers? RFID tags are being used for inventory control, but could easily be used on us. We already have RFID tags embedded into our E-passports and many new credit cards. Not only is the big brother thing scary but crooks can easily get a cloned scanner and scan your personal information just by walking by you. It has been done and may continue. Oh, and wait until the federal government tries to get the National ID Act up and going again. Everyone with one national ID and all of our information in one big electronic database - no wonder cyber crime is a multi-billion dollar industry.</p>
<p>Great post proud mom. That’s exactly what im talking about.</p>
<p>I wonder how often these things are done. </p>
<p>Friend with security clearance had his blackberry stolen. Called it into work and they immediately zapped his phone by satellite and destroyed the inside. Just like that. Unuseable and info was nonretrieveable.</p>
<p>This is the messed up part for me. Assuming that everyone who works at car dealers are completely trustworthy and would never use this outside of its intended purpose, what’s to stop someone else like the man in the article from screwing with this and causing a tragedy? The car horn thing is innocuous enough, but it seems unclear whether or not the device can disable the car completely while it’s in motion.</p>
<p>I would assume that there are safety mechanisms in the device so as not to create a hazard while the car is in motion or they would set themselves up for lawsuits. The easiest thing to do would be to disable the car after the engine is turned off.</p>
<p>I assume so too, but it’s still incredibly discomfiting. It’s amazing how much power people will give away to unaccountable strangers, isn’t it though? You’re not just putting your car in the hands of the car dealer – which is fairly reasonable – but anyone the car dealer hires, anyone the car dealer fires, or anyone who happens to figure out the trick to messing with the system.</p>
<p>The dealer in question is of a genre known as a “buy here, pay here” dealer. This type of dealer caters to people with very bad or no credit and offers them credit that is built on a weekly payment method. These dealers actually do their own financing and are on the hook for any and all losses that are incurred. Since the history of non payment and late payment is very high and repos very common many dealers of this ilk do this to protect their often very significant financial investment.</p>
<p>This is not a practice used by legitimate franchised dealers since their financing is done by third parties…independent banks, GMAC, Ford Motor Credit, etc.</p>