If you’re buying a car with connected car technology, thinking it would help you to recover it in the event of theft, you might want to recalibrate your expectations.
A recent incident in the UK, in which a car owner had three tracking devices installed in his car and still couldn’t recover it, led the carmaker to state that connected-car technology isn’t a “certified security vehicle tracker” (via the BBC).
So what actually happened here?
Ian Fogg, a technology analyst at FDM CCS Insight, had his Kia stolen from outside his home in March 2026. Fogg was abroad when his phone pinged, telling him he’d lost access to Kia Connect, the first sign that something was wrong.
What’s even more interesting is the thieves bypassed three layers of security tech. First was the video doorbell, which actually caught the theft on camera. The thieves broke into the car without the keys and bypassed Kia’s connected car security layer as well.
They disconnected his phone via an unsecured entertainment system process, which, ironically, is designed to help new owners take over a vehicle. This way, Fogg couldn’t access his car’s live location. He then filed location requests with Kia Connect eight times, but each response arrived 24 to 48 hours after the location was recorded.
The car’s last known position was in Lithuania. Fogg could briefly track his car using the AirTag he had placed in it for situations like this, but Apple’s own anti-stalking noise alert gave it away.
So what does Kia actually say this service is?
“Kia Connect is a customer convenience feature, not a certified security vehicle tracker,” the company told the BBC. It cited GDPR compliance as the reason it cannot provide real-time tracking.
Car safety firm Thatcham Research backed this up, warning of a “genuine and growing gap” between what consumers expect and what connected car features actually do. Even though Kia offers proper stolen-vehicle tracking for premium subscribers in the US, the service isn’t available in the UK or across Europe.
Thatcham recommends independently certified devices with their own power source for locating cars. This could have been any other car burglary incident, but the fact that the owner couldn’t prevent it or recover the car, even after having more safeguards in place than most people do, makes it worth your attention.