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A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

elevationlab.com

531–540 of 592 posts

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#531

Who leaves 10K worth of anything in their car? I get antsy leaving my $200 laptop hidden under my seat! This person is crazy. There is also no guarantee they person who stole the bag wouldn't dump the bag(with the hidden AirTag) and just keep the gear or that the police would help recover it even if you gave them the location(many times the don't).

It's not very risky to leave expensive items in the car, but in the trunk, not on the backseat! Also, never put these expensive items or really any kind of bag in the trunk after you park. Always do it before the ride. Or at least make very sure that no one is watching you. This is a basic safety drill. And it doesn't apply to expensive things only. You don't want your window broken for a sport bag with a sweaty t-sh…

I lost > $10K of photo gear from a locked car trunk on my first trip to Hawaii (Oahu).

I shot some pictures at a photo location, put the gear, in my camera backpack, into the trunk, drove 30 minutes to a completely different town, and stopped for lunch.

When I got back to the car, the stuff was gone. Thief had jimmied the driver's door and used the remote latch to open the trunk.

Surprisingly, my renter's insurance covered the loss without a hassle, except for a $500 deductible. But three days of pictures that I hadn't yet downloaded were gone forever :(

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#533
post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you live in a crappy big city like SF, Oakland, Santa Clara, etc. For the vast majority of people who live in reasonable cities, calling the police for something like that will get a timely response.

Please tell us the magical place you live in that has friendly, helpful police with time to investigate every crime.

Suburbs. We get 84 squad cars showing up for noise complaints...

Many larger cities don't have the budget to provide adequate police coverage. So you get this sort of "best effort" response.

This is made worse with recent years of "defund the police" policies creeping into some of our larger cities.

It just reinforces the Pro 2A community's saying - when seconds matter, help is just minutes away.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s left anywhere in the open at anytime, you can repossess it legally as well. This happens with auto repossessions all the time. You don’t owe anyone an explanation as it’s yours - just take it if you can do so safely.

Not everywhere. In Sweden that would be a crime (a little bit depending on what you mean left in the open).

In the Netherlands buying stolen goods is a crime. If you knew or could reasonably have known it was stolen (e.g. a bike with a broken lock, no keys and a low price) you risk a serious fine. If you didn't know it was stolen you just loose the goods. Technically you then have a claim on the seller, but of course you're not going to get anything.

So stealing your own thing back without the police involved may technically be illegal, but practically if the airtag tells you where your stolen bike is and you have the keys, skip the police and take it. Nothing will happen. The thief or their client is not going to call the police since that gets them arrested or fined.

Of course you can't go into the thief's house to retrieve your things. Then you do need to call the police first. But the one case I know about someone doing that for a stolen iPhone based on Find My app location, the police showed up quickly and arrested the thief + found lots of other stolen things in their possession.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#535
post #81

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…

In all seriousness, if I put an Airtag on my $6k bike and it was stolen and it showed where it was. I'd be getting that bike back and not worrying too much about a confrontation. Worst case scenario I report it to police directly and it tells them exactly where it is. If something is stolen, if I don't know where it is that makes the problem 10x worse. At the very least the airtag shows where that item is (unless it…

Maybe a stinky bike lock like this would be better protection for a bike.

https://skunklock.com/

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#536
post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toronto & NYC

Welp, perhaps demand better from your elected officials. I live in a town. A few years ago, I had my car broken into with my bag and laptop stolen. Cops took fingerprints and forensics, found a match in a database, visited the suspect, arrested him (as he couldn't explain why his fingerprints was in my car), searched, found, and reclaimed my property.

I had a bunch of equipment stolen from a car in Mountain View and the lazy cops just dropped the case.

Those guys probably went on to steal more shit from someone else.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's ok though, right? As long as you do a good job placing/hiding it, the thief can't easily find and remove/disable without the speaker.

How big is your item and how hard is it to search? If you know a bag has an airtag in it, it won't take that long to find.

It's a vehicle and fairly hard to search.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#538
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you live in a city, yeah maybe. I have 3 removed cats in the toolbox of my truck, which I don’t lock, and neither they nor the truck have been touched. I even loaned the truck out to a rando on Facebook marketplace when I gave a fridge away, for free. Truck and cats came back

I mean I live in a city now (denser than any city in the Bay) and I left my truck unlocked for 3 months before I sold it. Btw, in case this is relevant: if you have a 1st gen Tacoma, never sell that thing. Still miss that truck.

96 250, non-diesel. I’ll never get rid of it.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#539
post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Move, or elect better local politicians. Your city is broken.

Different local politicians won’t change the legal fact that the police have no obligation whatsoever to investigate or prevent crime. It’s simply not in the job description.

Err… what is their job, then, if not investigating and preventing crime? That pet theory with the slave patrols of yours, by the way, isn’t it; that’s a hoax. The modern police in the USA and other countries stems from the British police, which did exactly what they are supposed to do, since ages.
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