Tesla owner thought someone was hacking his car but Reddit revealed an unexpected reason

He was reviewing his Sentry camera footage when something odd happened.

One of the great things about Tesla is that it can record what is happening around the car while it is parked. It helped several owners to identify thieves or other drivers who damaged their cars, but this footage was stranger than any of these.

The original poster shared the Sentry clip with a clear concern. On the footage, a man walked up to his parked Tesla, pressed something against the B-pillar, right where the key card reader is, then typed something on his phone, then walked away without looking back. The whole thing lasted only a few seconds, but it was strange enough to post the clip to Reddit with one question: Had someone just tried to hack his car? What came back in the comments was not the alarming confirmation he feared, and it wasn’t a simple reassurance either.

The stranger had lingered near the B-pillar, which is exactly where Tesla locates its key card reader, and the combination of something held against the door and the phone’s behavior looked deliberate. The worry was that the car might have been accessed, or its credentials cloned, without his knowledge.

The first group of Reddit users was certain the whole thing was a case of mistaken car identity, and almost everyone had a funny story about trying to open someone’s car that looked just like theirs.

One person described approaching a Supercharger at 2 a.m. to clean out his car, walking back to what he thought was his trunk, opening it, and finding a very surprised stranger in the driver’s seat. Another said his wife spent frantic minutes in the rain trying her key card, her phone app, and the frunk button on a car that wouldn’t budge, until she spotted a box of tissues in the back seat that definitely wasn’t hers. Teslas come in a limited range of colors and look nearly identical across most trim levels, and as the examples in the thread show, it’s easy to mistake a stranger’s car in a busy parking lot.

What shifted the thread was a comment that explained what had actually happened. They know the person on camera, who is apparently a local man known for advertising by placing business cards on parked cars, photographing them as proof of placement. Luckily, this was not a theft attempt or hacking, just a deeply odd marketing strategy.

How car hacking actually works

The security concern is worth taking seriously even if this particular incident turned out to be harmless.

Real relay attacks on keyless vehicles do happen, but they almost always involve two people with specialized hardware working in coordination: one positioned near the car, one near wherever the owner’s key or phone is located. The goal is to bridge the gap between the key signal and the car, making the vehicle think the owner is close. For Teslas, which use Bluetooth and NFC rather than a traditional fob, this kind of attack is more difficult to execute than on a conventional car but not impossible.

What a real attempt rarely looks like is one person pressing something against a door for a few seconds, alone, with no partner nearby. Relay attacks require coordination and equipment that doesn’t look like someone casually checking their phone. What the Sentry footage actually shows fits every other explanation the thread offered far better than it fits a theft attempt.

That said, any Tesla owner who wants to tighten things up has a short list of options that cost almost nothing. Enabling PIN to Drive means the car won’t move without a code, even if someone does get in. An RFID-blocking case for the key card is another great option, and it makes passive cloning much harder. And adding something visually distinctive to the car, whether it’s a sticker, colored wheel caps, or a rear spoiler, not only prevents the wrong-car embarrassment this thread is full of, but it also lets the owner spot the car from a distance without relying on the app’s live location feature, though that feature exists and works well too.

The thread it sparked is a useful reminder that Tesla security, while strong by default, isn’t something to leave entirely to chance. A PIN-to-Drive code takes about 2 minutes to set up, and a distinctive sticker costs almost nothing. Both are worth having before the next time a stranger lingers a little too long near the B-pillar.