Is it possible to have a third key programmed?

eric90278 said:

It seems if you were a car thief that you would grab something higher valued than a CR-V. I wonder if the Honda's security is weaker than a Porsche or BMW.
In the article, it said not to use the remote door unlock if you were worried about theft. Does the same code unlock the door as start the car?

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Eric this was already debunked in a thread from a long time ago but fear mongering by some seems to be the norm now.

The actual signal to unlock the doors versus unlocking the immobilizer are two different things.
the immobilizer unlock signal is only sent out when you are very close to the car, like maybe 6 feet away from the center console and the FOB in return sends out a very weak reply that only travels a few feet. The key fob is not transmitting a signal all the time, so nobody can just pass you in a shopping mall and get your code.

The car on the other hand is transmitting a weak signal all the time and the FOB picks it up when it gets close enough. The signal from the car is what tells the FOB to transmit its security code. If this was not the case and your FOB was transmitting all the time the battery in the FOB would be dead in a matter of days.

So unless someone has a person standing right next to your car with a relay device they will never get a thing. Secondly the codes are always randomly rotated so the same code cannot be used to start the car again. That means an intercepted code is pretty much useless. Some guy tried something about 3 years ago and created a new system involving blocking the rotating code but that system was evidently flawed and only worked on only a few models. In the end automakers just reworked their newer vehicles to get around the problem. This newly created rotating signal block was what fed into the News cycle about people just walking up and stealing vehicles. This is not to say that it cannot happen with certain vehicles but I doubt it will work on any of the newer vehicles

The signal to open the doors or start the car remotely are completely different from the immobilizer signal in that they are of a much higher power output but they must of course be initiated by the owner. Even if these are intercepted they are also being rotated after each use.

They had a very good documentary on this subject on CNN in which a camera crew was embedded with a group of annoymous car thieves working out of a chop shop. Long story short the owner of the chop shop was basically saying that the new tech is putting them out of business. These guys had the latest electronic systems for breaking into cars but the guys needed to first be inside the car and plugged into the OBDII port in order to use them, which seemed like they first had to somehow disable the alarm system. Then the software they used was very buggy so they spent an enormous amount of time trying to steal the vehicle and then lastly they had to obey the new car theft commandment! Thou shalt never bring a freshly stolen car to the chop shop" The owner told the guys that if anybody bought a freshly stolen car to his place and it had a tracker in it he would put them 6ft under. So the guys who steal the cars now had to drive them several blocks away and then park them for two weeks to see if the police showed up. Why just several blocks? Well they don't want to be in it too long in case the police have been notified and are tracking the vehicle and the two week wait is to see if the owner really has a tracking device. If it's still at the spot two weeks later they then take it to the chop shop.

The owner of the chop said he makes more money just stealing very expensive rims than risking it with cars. He claimed a nice set of Rims could score him something like $3000 without them taking any of the risks of a tracker. He said when they do steal cars it's only the very expensive models that are in demand in certain countries.


Rob