{"id":1034,"date":"2010-03-18T21:13:10","date_gmt":"2010-03-19T02:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/?p=1034"},"modified":"2010-03-18T21:13:10","modified_gmt":"2010-03-19T02:13:10","slug":"upshot-never-ever-ever-buy-cars-from-texas-auto-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/?p=1034","title":{"rendered":"Upshot: Never, Ever EVER Buy Cars From Texas Auto Center"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I had glanced at the headline on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/threatlevel\/2010\/03\/hacker-bricks-cars\/\">this story<\/a> about a rogue auto-dealership employee disabling people&#8217;s cars using a remote black box, but didn&#8217;t realize this had occurred in Austin.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The dealership used a system called Webtech Plus as an alternative to repossessing vehicles that haven\u2019t been paid for. Operated by Cleveland-based Pay Technologies, the system lets car dealers install a small black box under vehicle dashboards that responds to commands issued through a central website, and relayed over a wireless pager network. The dealer can disable a car\u2019s ignition system, or trigger the horn to begin honking, as a reminder that a payment is due. The system will not stop a running vehicle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Not withstanding the fact that: A.) This was a rogue employee, and B.) People should pay their car payments, I for one vow that I will never, EVER do business with Texas Auto Center under any circumstances. I&#8217;m not going to let Big Brother monitor my car, and I&#8217;m certainly not going to let this dealership&#8217;s Little Brother do the same. <\/p>\n<p>If anyone can point to step-by-step instructions on how to disable this device, I&#8217;ll post a followup link here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had glanced at the headline on this story about a rogue auto-dealership employee disabling people&#8217;s cars using a remote black box, but didn&#8217;t realize this had occurred in Austin. The dealership used a system called Webtech Plus as an alternative to repossessing vehicles that haven\u2019t been paid for. Operated by Cleveland-based Pay Technologies, the&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/?p=1034\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Upshot: Never, Ever EVER Buy Cars From Texas Auto Center<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,1],"tags":[1977,301,300,302,303],"class_list":["post-1034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-austin","category-uncategorized","tag-austin","tag-big-brother","tag-cars","tag-little-brother","tag-texas-auto-center","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1034"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1037,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034\/revisions\/1037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}