Does a spare key still broadcast if it has not been used for years?

Yes. A spare fob is not dormant and does not go to sleep through disuse. It listens for the same challenge and answers with the same credential as the key in your pocket, so a relay device will take whichever of the two is nearest the wall it is held against.

Where should I keep my spare car key in Buckingham?

Away from external walls and inside a signal-blocking pouch or tin, exactly as you would treat the main key. The usual spots — a kitchen drawer by a back door, a hook in a utility room, a bowl on a hall shelf — are all close to an outside wall and never move, which is what makes them useful to somebody else.

I bought the car with only one key. Should I worry?

It is worth taking seriously. Either a key was lost and somebody may have found it, or a second key exists somewhere you cannot trace. There is no way to obtain proof afterwards that no other working key is in circulation, so the practical answer is to make any key insufficient on its own.

The spare key nobody in Buckingham thinks about

By Kaine Carter10 September 20265 min read

Most people in Buckingham who have worried about keyless theft have done something about it. Usually a signal-blocking pouch, sometimes a tin, occasionally a considered decision about where in the house the keys live. Almost none of them have done anything about the second key, and the second key is the one that undoes the rest.

A spare fob is not dormant. It is not waiting to be activated, it has not gone to sleep, and being unused for two years changes nothing about it. It listens for the same low-power challenge and answers with the same credential as the one in your coat pocket. As far as your car is concerned there is no primary key and no backup — there are two keys, and either will do.

The trouble is where spares live. Nobody chooses a considered spot for a key they never use. They end up in a kitchen drawer near a back door, on a hook inside a utility room, in a bowl on a hall shelf, or in a document wallet in a study at the front of the house. Every one of those is a location an offender would have chosen for you, because it is close to an external wall and never moves.

So a household can do everything right with the key it uses daily and remain exactly as exposed as it was. The relay does not care which fob it finds. It only needs one, and it will take whichever is nearest to whatever wall the receiver is held against.

There is a second version of this problem worth mentioning while we are on it, which is the spare you do not have. If you bought the car used and it came with one key, somebody somewhere may still have the other, and you have no way of knowing. That is not a relay problem at all — it is simply a key, and it works. Anyone in that position should treat the vehicle as having an unaccounted-for key and act accordingly.

You can chase this with pouches. Buy a second one, decide where it lives, and make sure everyone in the house knows. It works, and it costs almost nothing. What it depends on is every adult in the household getting it right every single night for as long as you own the car, including the fortnight after Christmas when things end up in the wrong places and nobody is thinking about vehicle security. One lapse restores the original problem in full.

The alternative is to stop the key mattering. An immobiliser on the car's own data network asks for a sequence that exists only in your head — not in the fob, not in the spare, and not in whatever key the previous owner might still have in a drawer. Relay whichever key you like: the doors unlock, the engine turns over, and the car does not start. It is the only approach here that covers the key you forgot about as thoroughly as the one you remembered.

If you are in Buckingham or the surrounding villages and are not certain how many keys your car has or where they all are, that is a good reason to have this conversation. Send us the registration and we will tell you what suits the vehicle, with a written price before anything is booked.

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Questions

Straight answers

Does a spare key still broadcast if it has not been used for years?: Yes. A spare fob is not dormant and does not go to sleep through disuse. It listens for the same challenge and answers with the same credential as the key in your pocket, so a relay device will take whichever of the two is nearest the wall it is held against.
Where should I keep my spare car key in Buckingham?: Away from external walls and inside a signal-blocking pouch or tin, exactly as you would treat the main key. The usual spots — a kitchen drawer by a back door, a hook in a utility room, a bowl on a hall shelf — are all close to an outside wall and never move, which is what makes them useful to somebody else.
I bought the car with only one key. Should I worry?: It is worth taking seriously. Either a key was lost and somebody may have found it, or a second key exists somewhere you cannot trace. There is no way to obtain proof afterwards that no other working key is in circulation, so the practical answer is to make any key insufficient on its own.