Signs somebody has already looked at your car in Northampton

Vehicles taken to order are usually assessed first, and that is as true on a Northampton street as anywhere else. Somebody establishes that the car is what they think it is, that it is there regularly, and that the approach works — and only then does anyone come back for it. That gap is often days rather than hours, which means there is a period where the useful thing to do is notice.

The most talked-about sign is a small mark left on or near the vehicle. A cable tie on a wheel arch or a wing mirror, a short strip of tape on a bumper or a light cluster, a coin wedged in a door handle, a chalk or marker line on a kerb or a tyre wall. The purpose is the same in each case: it is a low-effort way of confirming that a car has not moved between one visit and the next, or of flagging a vehicle to somebody else who is going to do the actual work. It is worth being level-headed about this — most of these turn out to be litter, road grime or a garage's own marking. But if you find something deliberate looking, remove it, and then pay attention for a fortnight.

A more reliable indicator is anything that suggests somebody has been at the cabin. Look at the door seals and the top of the window glass for scuffing. Look at whether the wing mirror is angled slightly differently from how you left it, and whether anything on the dashboard or in the door bin has shifted. Check the plastic trim in the driver's footwell around the diagnostic socket — that panel is where an OBD attack has to happen, and it is the one place people never look. Fresh scratches around a lock barrel on an older car are worth taking seriously.

Then the ones that are not about the car at all. A vehicle you do not recognise parked on your road at odd hours with somebody in it. The same unfamiliar car on two different evenings. Somebody on foot who stops beside your vehicle for slightly too long while apparently looking at a phone. A doorbell camera notification at three in the morning with nothing obvious in the clip. Individually all of these are nothing. Two of them in the same week is a pattern.

There is a category worth separating out, which is signs that a relay attack was attempted and did not work. There generally are none, and that is the point — the method leaves no damage. What you occasionally get is a car that was locked and is now unlocked, or hazard lights that flashed in the night, or a vehicle that has moved a few feet. Any of those on a keyless car deserve to be taken seriously rather than explained away.

If you think something has been looked at, the sensible response is not dramatic. Move the car somewhere different for a week if you can, change where the keys live, get the spare into a pouch as well as the main fob, and report it to the police on 101 so it is on record — particularly if a neighbour has seen something too, because a pattern across several households gets a different response from a single call. Ask around for doorbell footage quickly, since most of it overwrites within a few days.

What none of that does is change the outcome if somebody comes back properly equipped. The reason we would rather talk about this than about crime figures is that noticing is a fragile defence: it depends on you looking, on the right week, at the right part of the car. An immobiliser on the vehicle's own data network does not depend on anybody noticing anything. Whether the fob was relayed, cloned or programmed through the footwell socket, the engine turns over and does not fire.

If any of this sounds like your street in Northampton, send us the registration. We will tell you what the car is exposed to and what it would cost to close, and there is no obligation to book.