PSA Warning: PAAK might leave your Mach-E (or possessions inside) vulnerable to theft

[eggic]

I can't explain it. To be honest, I'm kind of jealous. I'd love if PAAK on my car had a range of only 5 feet. Then I could leave it enabled.

I’m curious how much the phone location services are used to enable the unlock function. I have an iPhone 15 Pro Max and it didn’t work from about 30’ away to unlock the car. It was connected to the car via bluetooth and I successfully locked the vehicle with the phone.

I would be curious if you have a metal roof that is reducing the accuracy of your phone’s location. My blue location circle doesn’t overlap when I can’t unlock the vehicle.

Sponsored

 

[Dzrhino]

I use a faraday bag that I got on Amazon for my phone when I am on the move. There are a lot of reasons to mask your phone when you travel including masking your PAAK signal. I also have both fobs in faraday bags, nice ones that are made for key fobs (spouse approval). Since high tech thieves can access phones and fobs it's not a bad idea. A faraday bag will mask Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. They don't completely mask GPS, so your phone still may know where you are.? They were not expensive; my fob ones were about $10 and the one for my phone was $14.

 

[User100723]

wonder if phone cases and pockets have something to do with it? My folks can’t even open the door unless I’m standing right next to them. And I have both fob and phone in pockets.

 

[Secret Sauce]

You are correct that PAAK doesn't work if the FordPass app isn't running in the foreground _or_ the background. (For those unaware, a phone app is frequently running in the background even if you can't see it running. Both android and iOS have methods to forcibly close apps.)

I don't know about Android, but I know it is impossible for a user to force close an app on iOS. You will find plenty of (bad) advice on the net about how you can quit an app by swiping up on its window in the app picker, but "quitting" the app this way is an urban myth. This action does not quit the app let along force close it. All this does is delete the current saved state from the last time you used the app. How long processes are run after an app becomes inactive (not the current app) is determined entirely by iOS, with no user invention needed or allowed. So if you are concerned about PAAK connecting to your car when you are not in sight of it, turning off Bluetooth on your phone is the only practical solution short of disabling the phone entirely.

 

[miguelcastro67]

TL;DR: Enabling Phone as a Key might leave your Mach-E (or at least possessions inside the Mach-E) vulnerable to theft.

I was browsing the Mach-E manual earlier today and noticed a specific sentence that got me thinking:


That got me wondering if a long PAAK range could result in a thief stealing items from inside my car (or even stealing the car entirely!)

I decided my scenario for testing would be my car parked outside a building and my phone inside the building with a solid wall and at least 30-50ft (9-15m) of empty space between the car and my phone. (This would be a fairly common situation for eating at a restaurant, I think.) (This scenario also made it easy to test from my home by moving my car up and down the street.) For each test, the car was left locked (and it was verified locked by the side mirrors auto-folding in.) The "solid wall" is a wood framed wall with dry-wall on the interior and a faux-brick exterior filled with insulation.

I then started the FordPass app on my phone (an iPhone 15 pro max), and put my phone in standby. I put my phone down inside my house, went outside my house, walked to wherever the car was, and tried to open the car using the button on the driver side door. For each try, I would press the button no more than 3 times (waiting around 5seconds between each press) and if the door opened, I'd also try to start the car.

Results:

At 30 feet (9m) with a solid wall between the car and phone, I was able to unlock the car 5 out of 5 tries.
At 40 feet (12m) with a solid wall between the car and phone, I was only able to unlock 3 out of 5 tries.
At 50 feet (15m) with a solid wall between the car and phone, I was only able to unlock 1 out of 5 tries.

I was not able to start the car at all on any attempt regardless of distance.

---

The take-away from this is that leaving PAAK enabled could be a risk. While it seems that the Mach-E won't allow starting the car when the phone is far away from the car, it DOES allow unlocking it. Of course, different people might have different results with their particular phones. Perhaps different Mach-E's would also have different results.

For me, this test resulted in me disabling PAAK. Perhaps one day Ford will put out a fix so the phone has to be closer to the car. (Or perhaps there already is a fix out there, but my car doesn't have it.)

I do think that if a person has PAAK enabled, they should at least be wary. I keep coming back to the distance quoted in the manual: 131ft (40m.)

That's interesting. Have you checked to see if the same proximity results are obtained with the key fob?

 

[VaporTrails]

I have NOT enabled location svcs in FordPass, and notice that I must bring FordPass to the foreground to unlock the car. I have not done any rigorous testing on this yet to determine if that actually stops the ability to attack or if it is just a placebo. I do note the car is now a PITA to unlock with PaaK in most instances. I believe that iOS is putting the app to sleep after a time because it is not constantly pinging for location. I would be interested in a more evidence-based approach, but that is my experience.

I am okay with FordPass acting like a fob in that I have to bring the app to the forefront to unlock the car.

 

[Russ]

So for the last month or so my PAAK doesn't even work -i have varying degrees of functionality. Mostly I can do nothing unless the phone is in my hand I'm standing next to the car and the app is open. Even with that, I sometimes have to click the unlock button. That works. Then I get in and No Key Detected and it asks for my password to start the car. The issues seemed to correspond with the app update that changed everything. BTW..... The new app doesn't really work at all for anything. Public charger info is much less useful and my plug and charge no longer works. If you're at a station with simultaneous charging, it doesn't tell you which is A or B, for example anymore. So much wise all over.

 

[eggic]

I have NOT enabled location svcs in FordPass, and notice that I must bring FordPass to the foreground to unlock the car. I have not done any rigorous testing on this yet to determine if that actually stops the ability to attack or if it is just a placebo. I do note the car is now a PITA to unlock with PaaK in most instances. I believe that iOS is putting the app to sleep after a time because it is not constantly pinging for location. I would be interested in a more evidence-based approach, but that is my experience.

I am okay with FordPass acting like a fob in that I have to bring the app to the forefront to unlock the car.

You are onto something. I turned off location services and the optimize PaaK option came up in the Controls section of the app. This is what it says about location services.

My guess is something is wonky with the OPs phone or car location or both locations.

 

[eggic]

You are onto something. I turned off location services and the optimize PaaK option came up in the Controls section of the app. This is what it says about location services.

My guess is something is wonky with the OPs phone or car location or both locations.

@garyd9 it would be interesting to see if you get the same results with location services off.

 

[dtbaker61]

TL;DR: Enabling Phone as a Key might leave your Mach-E (or at least possessions inside the Mach-E) vulnerable to theft.

I was browsing the Mach-E manual earlier today and noticed a specific sentence that got me thinking:


That got me wondering if a long PAAK range could result in a thief stealing items from inside my car (or even stealing the car entirely!)

I decided my scenario for testing would be my car parked outside a building and my phone inside the building with a solid wall and at least 30-50ft (9-15m) of empty space between the car and my phone. (This would be a fairly common situation for eating at a restaurant, I think.) (This scenario also made it easy to test from my home by moving my car up and down the street.) For each test, the car was left locked (and it was verified locked by the side mirrors auto-folding in.) The "solid wall" is a wood framed wall with dry-wall on the interior and a faux-brick exterior filled with insulation.

I then started the FordPass app on my phone (an iPhone 15 pro max), and put my phone in standby. I put my phone down inside my house, went outside my house, walked to wherever the car was, and tried to open the car using the button on the driver side door. For each try, I would press the button no more than 3 times (waiting around 5seconds between each press) and if the door opened, I'd also try to start the car.

Results:

At 30 feet (9m) with a solid wall between the car and phone, I was able to unlock the car 5 out of 5 tries.
At 40 feet (12m) with a solid wall between the car and phone, I was only able to unlock 3 out of 5 tries.
At 50 feet (15m) with a solid wall between the car and phone, I was only able to unlock 1 out of 5 tries.

I was not able to start the car at all on any attempt regardless of distance.

---

The take-away from this is that leaving PAAK enabled could be a risk. While it seems that the Mach-E won't allow starting the car when the phone is far away from the car, it DOES allow unlocking it. Of course, different people might have different results with their particular phones. Perhaps different Mach-E's would also have different results.

For me, this test resulted in me disabling PAAK. Perhaps one day Ford will put out a fix so the phone has to be closer to the car. (Or perhaps there already is a fix out there, but my car doesn't have it.)

I do think that if a person has PAAK enabled, they should at least be wary. I keep coming back to the distance quoted in the manual: 131ft (40m.)

this is why I either turn off Bluetooth, or force-stop Fordpass on my phone if my MME is parked outside and I am within 100ft.

I don't want the vehicle to 'wake up' as eat the battery when I walk in and out of range, and I don't want it to unlock .

 

[Mach-Lee]

I don't know about Android, but I know it is impossible for a user to force close an app on iOS. You will find plenty of (bad) advice on the net about how you can quit an app by swiping up on its window in the app picker, but "quitting" the app this way is an urban myth. This action does not quit the app let along force close it. All this does is delete the current saved state from the last time you used the app. How long processes are run after an app becomes inactive (not the current app) is determined entirely by iOS, with no user invention needed or allowed. So if you are concerned about PAAK connecting to your car when you are not in sight of it, turning off Bluetooth on your phone is the only practical solution short of disabling the phone entirely.

If location services are not set to "always allow", then force-closing FordPass on iOS does prevent PAAK from functioning. I've confirmed that many times. The car does not wake up or connect to the phone with the app closed.

If location services are set to "always allow" FordPass can persist in the background by constantly requesting your location, and PAAK will continue to work even if FordPass is closed.

Despite the warnings from the app, I recommend leaving FordPass location permissions set to "while using" only so quitting the FordPass app will disable PAAK. It will also use less phone battery that way.

I don't doubt you're correct, but the way iOS manages whether BLE has access to the app is affected by the location permission setting and whether the app has a current saved state.

 

[Guss-E 2021]

2022 Mach-E with a Samsung Galaxy S23. My PaaK is not nearly that sensitive. Usually I have to unlock my phone to get Sheeba to let me in. I'm a little hurt she doesn't recognize me after all we've been through.

Seriously though, I wonder how much of a difference there is between Android and iOS and the various handsets (and BT versions). I guess I'm lucky NH has pretty much the lowest crime rate in the country. Although, we did have a small string of dealer car thefts right here in town so no locale is immune.

Guess I'll have to figure out how to load HAL into my car. That way it can lock thieves inside while placing a call to 911 ?

 

[garyd9]

@garyd9 it would be interesting to see if you get the same results with location services off.

Why? I shouldn't have to reconfigure my phone's settings for a single app. I've given the FordPass app the permissions it requested. If those weren't appropriate, then it's a bug in FordPass that it's requesting them.

While I love the fact that this kicked off a great conversation, I think it's become somewhat derailed. I never intended my post to turn into a "PSA." I was just sharing my test and results. Someone else decided to edit the title and flag it as 'news.'

The purpose of my testing was simple: Can I trust PaaK?

The answer turned out to be "no."

Testing at 30-50 ft wasn't really needed for my paranoia. Even a 10 foot test through a non-windowed wall would have been enough (it just wasn't feasible for me to test that short a distance.)

If I sit down in a restaurant and my car is on the other side of a solid wall, my car might be vulnerable to anyone wandering by. Keep in mind that I might only be 6-10 feet away from the car (on the other side of a wall.) At this distance, someone just walking by the car might cause the welcome lights to turn on... and the door button light to illuminate. Suddenly, a person who might never have given my car a second thought becomes curious. They press that welcoming button the driver door... and the door pops open! Wow! My phone doesn't even let me know that my car was just opened...

Keep in mind that this is all about PASSIVE functionality on my part. I haven't pressed any buttons.


Comparing it to the fob: I haven't done any specific tests using only the fob, though it would probably be a good idea.

 

[VaporTrails]

2022 Mach-E with a Samsung Galaxy S23. My PaaK is not nearly that sensitive. Usually I have to unlock my phone to get Sheeba to let me in. I'm a little hurt she doesn't recognize me after all we've been through.

Seriously though, I wonder how much of a difference there is between Android and iOS and the various handsets (and BT versions). I guess I'm lucky NH has pretty much the lowest crime rate in the country. Although, we did have a small string of dealer car thefts right here in town so no locale is immune.

Guess I'll have to figure out how to load HAL into my car. That way it can lock thieves inside while placing a call to 911 ?

I’m sorry Dave. I’m taking you on an unsolicited joy ride to the police station. Please buckle your seat belt Dave.

 

[OON7]

Z Flip 5, I gotta be within about a foot of the door and have my pocket with the phone be the one closest to the car.

Why this is the case I don't know, but was same experience for me with my Z Flip 3 and 4 too. Could be the case I am using or something else with how the phone works while flipped shut.

Sponsored