Do you have to worry about burglars driving around trying to open your garage door with their collection of remotes?
The answer is no. Unless your remote is from 91 or later.
In order to understand this we might need to back up and discuss how remotes and operators function and connect to each other.
- Your handheld remote needs to be the specific brand of the operator in most cases. It has a certain frequency it travels on, as well as a “Rolling Code” which means the code changes every time you press the button. This is the security feature that eliminated the old open someone else’s operator with your remote, trick.
- Your operator must be in “Learn” mode to pair it with a remote. This is manually enabled and is only enabled for 30 seconds.
The scenario that a stranger drove by and opened your door by pressing their remote is almost impossible, unless:
- You were just programming your own remote, hit learn code on your operator, all while they were parked outside hitting the button at the same time thus overriding the programming of your own remote.
To be frank, and not to over-educate, the most likely cause of burglary through the garage door would be gaining access to the remote you keep in your car, or gaining knowledge of your keypad PIN.
Solution to the problem: Keep your cars locked at night. Make sure no one else is around to watch you enter your keypad PIN.
Here is a short news clip on how a family was robbed by leaving their car unlocked at night.
The video below shows how one family in Las Vegas was robbed from gaining access to their car’s remote: