High-Tech RepoMan

PlayfullyClever writes "A new gizmo is upping the odds that even the most hard-knock customer will come up with the car payment. Hooked into the ignition system, the gadget comes in a handful of versions with one common conclusion: No pay, no start. It's worked wonders at Norfolk's Patriot Auto Sales, where nearly every car that drives off the lot is outfitted with a PayTeck Smart Box, a system that hands over a five-digit code in exchange for each payment. Come due date, the car won't crank until the customer punches the code into a palm-size keypad wired into the dash. I would think this "Smart Box" would get hacked way too easily, leaving car companies without their money."

Comments

Wow!

[Crouty]

Cool, you don't just get the car but also a nice keypad that comes with it. * hotwiring rental as usual *

Great...what's next?

[FrankieBoy]

How about banner ads running across my dashboard to reduce my payment?

Re:Problem

[Minwee]

"And what if the system malfunctions and you are unable to get to the hospital in time and someone dies?"

Yeah. There really ought to be a special phone number you can call to have someone pick you up and take you to the hospital if your car isn't working.

Just to make it easy to remember it should be a short one, and maybe the same in all parts of the country. I think three digits starting with '9' would probably work well.

Re:Not New

[Mr2001]

Regardless, it'd be nice if Passtime would give me the freakin' code to generate the Passtime codes so I can integrate it into my software!

Please let me know if they come through; I'd also like to integrate that code into my software.

Regards,
A Car Thief