For my bicycle, since it's more likely to be stolen than lost, I have little bits of paper inserted into lots of places that bike mechanics are likely to find.
"If this bike has not been brought into your shop by [insert your name] then it is stolen, please call me immediately on [insert your number]".
These little pieces of paper are in places like the stem, the bars, under the bar tape, in the bottom bracket, under the inner tubes, under the rim tape, in the hubs. Literally anywhere I can put them where they are likely to survive undetected by a casual user of the bike but that is likely to be discovered the first time the bike is taken into a shop for servicing. Obviously I use little bits of plastic and a permanent CD marker for the places likely to get wet (the ones under the innertubes).
I don't expect to get the bike back days after a theft, but weeks or months later I think it would work well.
I like this idea alot. I do have my doubts that someone who has stolen a bike is going to take it in for servicing. Though they may sell it to an unsuspecting person who subsequently takes the bike to a shop so maybe it does have a shot of working. Good concept either way.
I'm always amazed by news stories about people being prosecuted for possession of child pornography, found when they took their laptop in for servicing/fixing. So in light of that someone taking a stolen bike for servicing doesn't seem that far-fetched..
In London a sizeable quantity of bike thefts appear to be pre-meditated and part of organised crime. The bikes we've recovered (I run http://www.londonfgss.com/ ) have turned up as far afield as the coast and as close as Brick Lane.
Down Brick Lane market on a Sunday morning there is literally a fence... a chicken wire one from which stolen bikes are sold. Lord knows what the buyers are thinking, and the police are well aware of what is happening too (but are doing very little about it).
We are now tracking (within the community) where bikes are stolen from, the measures used to protect them and evidence of how they were circumvented as well as where and when the bikes are turning up. With a large enough community (over 12,000 users in the same city) we're able to recover a fair amount of our own property after the event... not to say we're lax about protecting it but that by taking as many precautions and steps that you can you stand some chance of being re-united should the worst happen.
Opportunist crime wherein someone just steals something because it's easy to and then they keep the item now seems rare.
Oh, and if you're interested in bike security these guides on my site are good places to start:
We also have private areas of the site for tracking stolen bikes, and have worked with companies like Kryptonite to help make their locks better, local police to try and get them to do stuff about the 'fence' and the local cycling associations to try and raise awareness. We're collectively writing guides on bike security too which we hope will be released under creative commons on a wiki and then from there we can encourage bike shops to distribute copies with every new bike sold.
Anyhow... I am more than wandering off the point, which is that most stolen bikes in London are stolen to be sold and that the buyers tend to be regular people who do take them into bike shops after a while, from where some bikes have been recovered. More successfully though, we've recovered bikes from Gumtree and eBay classifieds.
Comments
Just have a text file on any drive you're worried about losing.
For something like a camera the average person wouldn't notice a text file, but may notice photos.
For phones, I generally include my email in the greeting/home screen message.
For my iPod, I select the engraving option and use '$100 Reward. Contact: my_email'
For my bicycle, since it's more likely to be stolen than lost, I have little bits of paper inserted into lots of places that bike mechanics are likely to find.
"If this bike has not been brought into your shop by [insert your name] then it is stolen, please call me immediately on [insert your number]".
These little pieces of paper are in places like the stem, the bars, under the bar tape, in the bottom bracket, under the inner tubes, under the rim tape, in the hubs. Literally anywhere I can put them where they are likely to survive undetected by a casual user of the bike but that is likely to be discovered the first time the bike is taken into a shop for servicing. Obviously I use little bits of plastic and a permanent CD marker for the places likely to get wet (the ones under the innertubes).
I don't expect to get the bike back days after a theft, but weeks or months later I think it would work well.
I like this idea alot. I do have my doubts that someone who has stolen a bike is going to take it in for servicing. Though they may sell it to an unsuspecting person who subsequently takes the bike to a shop so maybe it does have a shot of working. Good concept either way.
I'm always amazed by news stories about people being prosecuted for possession of child pornography, found when they took their laptop in for servicing/fixing. So in light of that someone taking a stolen bike for servicing doesn't seem that far-fetched..
Truth. Just thinking that they might be more likely to steal another bike rather than bothering to get the first stolen one fixed.
In London a sizeable quantity of bike thefts appear to be pre-meditated and part of organised crime. The bikes we've recovered (I run http://www.londonfgss.com/ ) have turned up as far afield as the coast and as close as Brick Lane.
Down Brick Lane market on a Sunday morning there is literally a fence... a chicken wire one from which stolen bikes are sold. Lord knows what the buyers are thinking, and the police are well aware of what is happening too (but are doing very little about it).
We are now tracking (within the community) where bikes are stolen from, the measures used to protect them and evidence of how they were circumvented as well as where and when the bikes are turning up. With a large enough community (over 12,000 users in the same city) we're able to recover a fair amount of our own property after the event... not to say we're lax about protecting it but that by taking as many precautions and steps that you can you stand some chance of being re-united should the worst happen.
Opportunist crime wherein someone just steals something because it's easy to and then they keep the item now seems rare.
Oh, and if you're interested in bike security these guides on my site are good places to start:
Guide to which locks to use (which are primary security, which should be considered secondary): http://www.londonfgss.com/thread17938.html
Review of a motion alarm: http://www.londonfgss.com/thread24813.html
We also have private areas of the site for tracking stolen bikes, and have worked with companies like Kryptonite to help make their locks better, local police to try and get them to do stuff about the 'fence' and the local cycling associations to try and raise awareness. We're collectively writing guides on bike security too which we hope will be released under creative commons on a wiki and then from there we can encourage bike shops to distribute copies with every new bike sold.
Anyhow... I am more than wandering off the point, which is that most stolen bikes in London are stolen to be sold and that the buyers tend to be regular people who do take them into bike shops after a while, from where some bikes have been recovered. More successfully though, we've recovered bikes from Gumtree and eBay classifieds.
> For something like a camera the average person wouldn't notice a text file, but may notice photos.
More specifically, when they plug in the camera, it would likely offer to import the photos; it would do nothing with the text file.