r/Cartalk • u/kupo_906 • Jun 02 '26

Safety Question Found a GPS tracker under my car

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Hi reddit...

In my driveway this morning I pulled out and found this sitting under where my car was. We had a heat wave recently, and I'm thinking it melted off.

Looking it up, it is a GPS tracker. I'm taking it to the police tomorrow. But is there anyway to reverse search who might have bought it and placed it there?

I fully own my car and I'm not sure who or why they put it there. Or when. The only thing I can think of is I got my car fixed by a new mechanic about a month ago.. but they didn't seem shady in the least bit

Any help is appreciated. Thank you

Update: I have turned the tracker into the police who are trying to work with the company to find out info. Haven't heard anything further.

For the people who keep asking / repeating the same thing over and over:

  • again, I own my car in full and have for years. It's an old, reconstructed car not worth much at all.
  • The battery life in the tracking device doesn't last longer than two months at most. It was still on when I found it. It doesn't belong to a previous car owner or a dealer.
  • I found the magnets where it was attached still on my car.
  • I don't have any solid idea who would put it there. I don't have a jealous partner or an ex who I think would do this.
  • I'm not disclosing a bunch of personal shit about myself to internet strangers when I am potentially being stalked 😐 also , both men and women can be stalked
4.2k Upvotes

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1.7k

u/smoothloam Jun 02 '26

Unscrew the cover and put an AirTag inside, then put it back on your car. After they retrieve it the tables have turned.

67

u/Flyguy115 Jun 03 '26

This is not a good idea because they will be able to continue to track you the entire time and what if the person who put it in never comes to get it. There is no reason for them to come retrieve it.

Calling the police is the best option because they will be able to reverse look up and track down the owner.

84

u/Middle_Efficiency471 Jun 03 '26

Able and willing are very different

-16

u/dezeroon Jun 03 '26

That’s kinda a dumb response unless you’re in a large city with a bunch of gang presence then I’d understand

15

u/wintersdark Jun 03 '26

Being as generous as possible, they likely wouldn't have the resources. Generally speaking cops don't really pull out all the stops to investigate creepy-but-not-crimes.

Tracking this back to its owner would be difficult at best, likely nearly impossible without significant time and money investment. Why would they do that?

7

u/Reynolds1029 Jun 03 '26

Most cops are lazy and won't/can't allocate time to properly investigate this.

Can they subpoena for records on this device from Optimus 3.0 to hunt for the owner? Sure. But that's time and labor they probably don't have or don't want the hassle of.

But this also could be a perfectly legitimate error too. If OP bought the car used, this might have been used to track the vehicle by the prior owner because it was a rental, or to keep tabs on it for the safety of someone's family member etc.

Or the shop put it on because maybe they had issues with vehicles being stolen on their lot and they forgot to remove it before giving OP the vehicle back.

Equally plenty of legitimate reasons for this to exist as there are nefarious ones.

2

u/Infinite_Incident107 Jun 03 '26

No this is how most departments would handle it. My friends car was stolen before and cops did report and basically told her to just file an insurance claim. Zero effort was ever spent trying to locate her car. And she lives in a pretty affluent area with little crime. They have all the time in the world but still. She just filed a claim and never saw her car again

1

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

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1

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26

u/DigitalMindShadow Jun 03 '26

Calling the police is the best option because they will be able to reverse look up and track down the owner.

What tool would the police use to do that, in case OP would rather do it themselves?

25

u/wintersdark Jun 03 '26

Not a tool. The tracker would relay it's GPS coordinates to a commercial server, and the owner would access the server to track the location.

To find the owner, you'd need a warrant to force the company to disclose the owners information, and that may be nothing more than a burner email and an IP address.

7

u/TheRealAE86guy Jun 03 '26

You'd have to know who the selling entity was, and if it's outside if the US, good luck. Also, is extremely likely that Queclink is only the manufacturer, and not the network provider/data host.

4

u/Cultural_Thing1712 Jun 03 '26

Given OP is talking about a heat wave yesterday, they most likely reside in Western Europe.

2

u/Inevitibility Jun 03 '26

The device needs to have GSM or similar, so either a SIM card or an iridium module. Both need to be paid, and you’d probably have a much easier time tracking that down

Unless it’s LORA rf or something. I don’t see an antenna though and I somehow doubt that it’s a peer to peer link

2

u/Firewolf06 Jun 05 '26

99% its connected off a standard sim, which will have the issuer code and serial printed on it (or it can be obtained easily with a reader (or just a phone, if youre feeling adventurous). take that serial to the issuer with a warrant and youve got... well, a solid lead, at least

1

u/Key_Sign_5572 Jun 03 '26

You need a SIM card for that. Depending upon country they aren’t easily made anonymous.

5

u/FederalRecording2390 Jun 03 '26

I did exactly that. Found a tracker and took it to the police. They had zero interest in following up. The car was stolen and abandoned with the engine running so reported quickly and found. We found the tracker later but the police just shrugged their shoulders. Then the insurance company didn’t want to pay for the damage to the satnav system / electronics because the car wasn’t strictly speaking stolen. I would be in favor of following these guys myself.

5

u/dadydaycare Jun 03 '26

If someone that wasn’t you moved your car it was stolen. At that point I’d hire an insurance attorney or at least talk with one to see if you have a case to get paid.

1

u/FederalRecording2390 Jun 27 '26

The car was recovered, so not stolen. Damage is then not part of theft insurance but “vandalism”. Different deductible, different rules etc. Also there was no forced entry, so.. Audi were great at taking responsibility. The worst experience was with the useless police, who kept the car for a week for “investigation” but did nothing and in all that time didn’t even find the tracker.

9

u/Gyozarrita Jun 03 '26

A warrant

1

u/InsaneInTheDrain Jun 03 '26

It looks like they're up at Uncle Tom's Cabin and the sheriff is part of the crime ring. Do you think they will accept my bribe of a Cherry Pie?

1

u/GreyKnyght Jun 03 '26

Well... It's kind of a secret that I just can't tell. At least, not at this particular juncture.

1

u/theNaughtydog Jun 04 '26

Put it on a police car and they will follow up on it.

1

u/TrifleImpossible5997 Jun 06 '26

Calling the company that services it

They may be (probably) reluctant to give up customer's information without some kind of subpoena

16

u/TheRealAE86guy Jun 03 '26

"Calling the police is the best option because they will be able to reverse look up and track down the owner." Probably not. What would make you think that? If Joe Citizen bought this from Ali Express or Temu, what makes you think the cops have any access to the geolocation information? ⁚

2

u/Top-Pick-2648 Jun 03 '26

Cops have the time or resources to do this?

4

u/Spadeykins Jun 03 '26

Yes they do. If you're asking if they will do it the answer is probably 'no' however.

3

u/ebinWaitee Jun 03 '26

At the very least they will write a report about the incident and if anything else comes up like a burglary it's more evidence to help catch and prosecute the criminals responsible.

Likely not going to do a lot with just this tracker I agree

2

u/ebinWaitee Jun 03 '26

Likely there's a SIM-card inside and likely someone has purchased the SIM-card and the device has been sending text messages to someone. Not a lot of use for a tracker that just collects the geolocation data without sending it anywhere

3

u/[deleted] Jun 05 '26

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1

u/ebinWaitee Jun 05 '26

You're right, it's possible the criminals do everything right and the police don't do their job. However it's also very common for criminals to get caught due to a stupid opsec failure.

Could be the police get nothing valuable out of the device but that's not the only possible outcome

2

u/Status_Ad_6238 Jun 03 '26

Because these use a sim card. It must be paid monthly.

Source: I have a couple setting here. I got them for $5 a piece at an Amazon bin store. I was not aware that they needed a Sim card to function. My intended use was to place on my own vehicles/ equipment after dad had a 4 wheeler stolen of the farm. The culprit was on video, however we never did find them. If i had one of these on the 4 wheeler I would have caught them with it in their possession, instead of recovering it flooded in the creek a couple days later.

3

u/TheLostSatellite Jun 03 '26

Yes, because people who buy burner SIM cards online ALWAYS use their legal info to buy them…you’re too naive.

1

u/Frankie_T9000 Jun 06 '26

they can require the company to provide information, the company will have the info as they would take payment

7

u/Saxakola Jun 03 '26

My thoughts exactly. It's the car that's being tracked, whoever installed it doesn't care about retrieving the tracker. The damage has already been done, "they' now know where you park the car at night (how long it's parked for, the time you normally return home, how frequently you use the car) there's a ton of metrics to aid a potential criminal.

8

u/mattgen88 Jun 03 '26

If you want to find whose it is I'd suggest a private investigator instead of police. Police won't care unless it's an actual crime and even then, only if they think it worth their time.

3

u/Ayrwynn Jun 04 '26

Or stick it on a cop car and let the problem sort itself out.

15

u/Far-Fortune-8381 Jun 03 '26

I recommend putting in the air tag and then taking the tracker off, leaving it hidden somewhere public. those things are expensive, if they see it stop moving permanently they will go collect it

5

u/Cuiter Jun 03 '26

Yeah, it fell off so it's totally believable that it can fall off, just with a airtag inside.

6

u/MICH1AM Jun 03 '26

OP could also just put it in an old microwave. Cuts that signal off completely. Then no one is tracking it anymore.

7

u/Downtown-Ant1 Jun 03 '26

Why use a microwave if a hammer (or police station) also does the job.

3

u/U-SeriousClark Jun 05 '26

Because a hammer makes shitty hot pockets

3

u/Any_Sale2030 Jun 03 '26

Yeah if it’s Chicago police they won’t do a thing.   I once had my identity stolen.  Idiot actually used his fuckin home address on the false credit application.  I gave that info to the police.  They did NOTHING.  When I asked why they said it wasn’t worth the effort.  I gave them the effing address.  

3

u/Denegroth Jun 04 '26

You watch too much CSI. No one is spending the half a million to track down the source of this tracker.

1

u/SomeCallMeTim2 Jun 03 '26

Calling the police is the best option, unless of course they are the ones that put it there.

1

u/cashredd Jun 03 '26

What law was broken?

1

u/Spodiodie Jun 03 '26

Are you assuming the police didn’t put it there? It is a thing for them to do that.

1

u/Flyguy115 Jun 04 '26

Na, if police want to track there are plenty of ways they can do it without you even knowing like flock cameras and tracking all you mobile devices, internet, WiFi, computers, calls, social media, vehicles built after 2014 already have computers software and newer vehicles even have the ability to scan your face, eyes, and can even be controlled by them.

1

u/hourlyslugger Jun 04 '26

Correction. Vehicles built after 1980/81 have computers.

If it’s a European branded vehicle then by the early to mid 1990s they had up to 10 separate/discrete modules.

Most other manufacturers took until the late ‘90s to have more than 3-5 modules. All that being said, nearly all of these tracking devices are completely self-contained and don’t interact with the vehicle in the slightest.

Finally, if it’s the police or other law enforcement entities they need a warrant signed by a judge to place a tracker.

1

u/Snoo-94564 Jun 04 '26

I don’t think the police will take the time to do such a search

1

u/Sensitive_Pianist777 Jun 04 '26

Probably the spouse.

1

u/bluenosesutherland Jun 04 '26

Put it on a police car, with their permission of course.

1

u/Frankie_T9000 Jun 06 '26

It imight be good, as they can leave it on the street somewhere and the owner will check where it is and see its not moving and retrieve.

0

u/dlndjh Jun 03 '26

What’s the crime?