How To End Bike [scooter] Theft

How To End Bike [scooter] Theft
[/quote]Part of what will make this secure is variance in the approaches we take

It could be as simple as locking up your bike into more appropriate quarters such as the inside of your home, or inside of a locked storage facility.

No matter how safe things may seem around your area, crimes will continue to happen;
it is up to you (the owner) to take responsibility to properly secure and protect your valuables.

(I have seen so many bike and scooter thefts, that people expect there to be more "police and security coverage" it's ridiculous to me in a way because these folks will just have their stuff stolen right out open places and they are not locked up, or they use cheap forms of locking mechanisms.)

A lot of what is common is neighbor thieves,
"Have ya peeked at your neighbor's backyard lately????!"

Here are my 2 rules of protecting my bike:

1. Always lock your bike, even if you are only going to leave it for 30 seconds. An unprotected bike might tempt some kid who is not a habitual bike thief, so an unprotected bike has a much larger chance of getting taken.

2. Remember, professional bike thieves have a choice. Make sure you bike looks less valuable and harder to take than the next bike in the rack. Especially if you leave your bike in a high crime area, a shiny new bike is likely to get pinched. It is better to ride a junker or make your shiny new bike look like one. A little latex paint and mud works wonders. And you might have the best security system in the world (aka 50,000 volt stun gun), but if the thief can't SEE that the bike is protected he will take your bike. A big chain and a lock that looks like handcuffs are great deterrents, and work great in conjunction with your 200 decible alarm and nuclear trigger detonating device hidden in a water bottle.

I had a try with a gsm cellphone sim card tracking service, had high hopes but it was only accurate to 2 miles! so not very useful. Gps would be better but as a tracker but its pricey.

The cleverest thing I've found so far is a gsm alarm that calls you when the bike is distrubed see http://www.pocketdiallers.com/ they seem to have been out of stock for at least 3 months. I'm puzzled why this sort of technology isn't more popular.

As our bikes get more valuable, a tracker and the service that goes with it would be a good thing to have in the big city. Something with it's own battery welded inside the frame so they can't just cut a wire or remove it. On cars it brings the recovery rate to just about 100%. Cops love it, the stolen car leads em right to the thief in about 30 minuites. The looks like crap method does work. It's one of the reasons I use a wallmart bike that wasn't even new for my ebike.

dogman wrote

a tracker and the service that goes with it would be a good thing to have in the big city. Something with it's own battery welded inside the frame so they can't just cut a wire or remove it. On cars it brings the recovery rate to just about 100%. Cops love it, the stolen car leads em right to the thief in about 30 minuites.

Cars usually have the "low-jack" system on it. I owned a v6 Ford Taurus once and I had that installed because of the area that I lived in, it worked great. The only thing that you had to be careful of, was if you left your keys in the ignition (running or not),
the lowjack system would automatically lock itself.
When I bought my Honda, I like their keyless entry alarm system; 1)if a thief were to break into my car and jump start it, the fuel pump will automatically shut itself down.
Low jacks are a pretty cool device, smaller chips are actually put inside family pets.

Those are id chips, my dogs have em, but there is actually a lowjack type thing that goes into a box on the dog collar. The owner can track the dog if it is still within a mile or so of the house with a radio direction finder. Not a real lowjack though.

arcticfox wrote

Pookie!!! Where is that cat? [checks computer]Oh, here she is... traveling 75MPH... towards... Mexico?

LOL! The chip in pet is actually an RFID and has to be scanned at the vet or shelter to retrieve the owners' information.

towards Mexico huh? she better have a passport hahaha, or some kind of ID to cross into TJ lmao

ROFLMAO (yup) sigh* :)

What will they think of next? :)

Those are id chips, my dogs have em, but there is actually a lowjack type thing that goes into a box on the dog collar. The owner can track the dog if it is still within a mile or so of the house with a radio direction finder. Not a real lowjack though.

RFID chips (the kind in your dog) can only be read by a scanner within a fairly short range. Most RFID chips are passive in that they contain no electrical source of their own, but will pick up electrical signals beamed at them and use the power of that electrical signal to transmit a return message. The RFID return message is a unique ID number. A lot depends on the power level of the original electrical signal but most RFID systems I've heard about max at 5 feet or so.

The employee badges given out by my employer (Sun Microsystems) are also used by other organizations -- such as the US Military ID cards -- To open the door on a Sun building I hold my badge a couple inches from a reader. The reader scans an RFID chip in my badge, checks with the central computers as to who I am etc, and then decides whether to let me through that door. Each door has its own identity, its own access rights, and I can request access rights to specific doors which have limited access...etc... But the point is this specific RFID reader has a range of a couple inches.

This other thing you described has to be an active transmitter. An active transmitter that communicates through the cell phone system would give a larger range (so long as it's within range of the cell phone system) but would of course require cell phone charges.

I honestly can't remember if this was a cell phone thing, or just an improvement on the tracking collars used when going after bear and mountain lion with a pack of hounds. It did come with a device you could use, but i think there was some kind of service you could get too. The regular hunting radio collars have a tracking range of a couple miles line of sight. Maybe they just beep on a frs frequency.

reikiman wrote

The employee badges given out by my employer (Sun Microsystems) are also used by other organizations

I am most familiar with these types of badges (with the type of work I do)

There is also a program called AMAG; AMAG is a software system used by companies
such as yours (but maybe not yours in particular): The AMAG system allows you to look up a badge ID number and it automatically pulls up the employee name, where they last were, what room they were in etc, you can even do a real detailed search if you wanted. The system is also used to deactivate and reactivate badges
if one happened to be lost or stolen.