501–510 of 592 posts
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There is no concept in American Law of "acquiring stolen stuff legally". If you buy something that was stolen, the original owner has the right to get it back without compensation to you.
I don't know somewhere else but, in Italy, buying / getting stolen stuff from somebody else is a specific kind of crime as well. You need to give a solid explanation why you have a stolen good.
I know this is useful (for something), but I'm stuck on the plot holes in the motivating story... Why didn't they replace the battery when the app complained? How long would a thief really keep the AirTag anyway? If the thief did keep the AirTag and you tracked them down, then what? A confrontation has a fairly high chance to have a worse result than losing some equipment. You could try to get the police to do it, bu…
- To change a battery, you need to not only see the notification but also be physically proximal to the device and have a fresh battery available. It can take some time to meet all these conditions and sometimes you simply forget.
- A single air tag only needs the battery replaced roughly every six months. However, the rate of replacements increases as you are managing more air tags. It's easy to be replacing a battery every few weeks.
- Replacement fatigue is a thing. At some point, we just get lazy.
I keep my BBQ on my front patio, directly in front of my battery-powered Ring camera. The battery on that camera needs to be recharged and replaced every two months. I try to get to it as quickly as I can - ideally during the low-battery state and before the battery dies completely. One time, however, I got lazy/forgot. Two days after the battery died, my BBQ was stolen.
Re: antitheft device
You're right. Apple markets AirTags for recovering lost items, not stolen ones. Nevertheless, they can be very effective for recovering stolen items. My local police department will aid in recovering stolen property. If the item has an AirTag that pings a location, an officer will investigate. In the case of my BBQ, the officer was willing to look for it same-day but, alas, I did not have an AirTag on it.
This product actually helps as it effectively hides the air tag. This makes it less likely that a thief would find and discard the airtag. They'd only be looking for it if their iPhone notifies them and, even then, they may not be able to discriminate which item contains the tag. Best case scenario: they discard the entire stolen unit, keeping the air tag with it.
I know this is useful (for something), but I'm stuck on the plot holes in the motivating story... Why didn't they replace the battery when the app complained? How long would a thief really keep the AirTag anyway? If the thief did keep the AirTag and you tracked them down, then what? A confrontation has a fairly high chance to have a worse result than losing some equipment. You could try to get the police to do it, bu…
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You don't want legal advice. You know where your stolen bike is, so you call the police. I think that's the usual process. Probably they will verify that the bike is yours, and retrieve it, or they will say that they don't have the resources. Are people imagining that the police will say that you can go take the bike, but then turn around and arrest you for theft? Of course, if the police tell you "finders keepers; i…
> Are people imagining that the police will say that you can go take the bike, but then turn around and arrest you for theft? People are imagining the police will tell you that you can't steal it back, when legally you can. After all, it's the police's job to keep the peace. And things are more peaceful if I'm not busting up thieves' hideouts all guns blazing like Rambo.
I know this is useful (for something), but I'm stuck on the plot holes in the motivating story... Why didn't they replace the battery when the app complained? How long would a thief really keep the AirTag anyway? If the thief did keep the AirTag and you tracked them down, then what? A confrontation has a fairly high chance to have a worse result than losing some equipment. You could try to get the police to do it, bu…
Re: changing batteries. - To change a battery, you need to not only see the notification but also be physically proximal to the device and have a fresh battery available. It can take some time to meet all these conditions and sometimes you simply forget. - A single air tag only needs the battery replaced roughly every six months. However, the rate of replacements increases as you are managing more air tags. It's easy…
I think it's also worth saying, these batteries aren't the standard AA batteries most people on hand, they're 2032 (I believe? or 2025) "quarter batteries" which isn't something a lot of people just keep around. So in addition to being physically proximal, once they've figured out how to open it up and being surprised by the "weird battery," they've also got to remember which it was when presented with a wall of similar looking "quarter batteries" at the store (see: my lack of assurity even having previously replaced these).
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Just be careful! In SOME jurisdictions, you can get in trouble for 'stealing' if you take back something that was stolen. Possession vs Ownership are 2 different things. For instance, the thief may have stolen something, sold it to someone who bought it in good-faith, and you take it back from that person, it's technically theft! File a police report, go through the right channels. If you know its yours, call the pol…
This is the most useful advice: call the police non-emergency number, explain concisely, and ask them what to do. A bunch of the other suggestions, here on HN Streetwise ProTips, can get self and/or friends beaten, stabbed, and/or arrested.
It's great that you think _someone will handle that for you_ but it is probably a fantasy. Unfortunately you will probably need to self resolve. If you think it is going to escalate to violence, bring overwhelming force.
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> Nice solution, but the bigger problem is how AirTags can basically be turned off, which makes it poor for many use cases. Isn't that too late? If you disabled that AirTag with your phone, you are probably the thief. Now we got you fully I.D.ed. It seems that the safest bet, for a thief/criminal, is to not take any iPhone (or phone) on him while committing the crime.
Thanks for this - I never thought that the act of disabling would create a record, but that makes sense! I wonder if that is something law enforcement can track and act on.
Go back to the page you linked -- https://support.apple.com/en-us/119874 -- the bottom of this page has a screenshot of those instructions.
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They fall from the sky. I don't buy them, I just hit up sondehub and see where there's a barely-used pair waiting for me to go clean up some litter.
What do you mean, what is sondehub?
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Can I get a source on any of these claims? Tbf, I am generally anti-police in the sense that they’re pretty institutionally bad at preventing or deterring crime in the current model, but I don’t really understand the argument you’re making here
I don't agree with citizenpaul But I do know if you're a homeless drug addict and you commit a crime that makes the cops throw you in jail - that's three meals a day, somewhere warm to sleep, and no lost income because you didn't have any income. Whereas if you're a member of the middle class and you commit the same crime and get thrown in the same jail? Mucho lost income, you can't pay your mortgage, you get fired f…
I don't know why people always parrot this like a fact. Plenty of prisons serve only two woefully inadequate meals a day (like, Fyre festival sandwich levels of inadequate) and prisons generally have atrocious climate control. In the southern states, they don't have air conditioning and it gets genuinely dangerous for the prisoners.
Some jurisdictions give the Warden a budget for feeding the prisoners, and any dollar they don't spend, they get to KEEP. This predictably results in malnourished prisoners, but Americans do not have the empathy to care most of the time.
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Just be careful! In SOME jurisdictions, you can get in trouble for 'stealing' if you take back something that was stolen. Possession vs Ownership are 2 different things. For instance, the thief may have stolen something, sold it to someone who bought it in good-faith, and you take it back from that person, it's technically theft! File a police report, go through the right channels. If you know its yours, call the pol…
The police won’t help you. It’s not their job.