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Fight Bicycle Theft With the Open Source Bike Registry
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "No one wants to buy a stolen bike, but if you see a bike you're interested in on Craigslist or at a flea market, there isn't a good way to know if it's stolen. Now Kickstarter has an interesting project that is looking for funding to expand a searchable database that will help users protect their bikes by permanently saving the bike's serial number. 'We regularly saw people trying to sell stolen bikes, and would search for the bikes online — but it was too difficult to find definitive information about them because too few people save their serial numbers,' says Seth Herr, founder of the Bike Index and lead developer of the project. Herr envisions Bike Index as a way to solve the 'awareness problem' — awareness of existing registries and of a bike's identifying information. 'A common problem when people get their bikes stolen is that it's like the first time the owner thinks about "What was my serial number?" and other details that are important in recovering a stolen bike,' says Marcus Moore. If every bike shop integrated Bike Index registration at the point of sale, that would make it easy for victims of bike theft to accurately report a stolen bike, and for bike purchasers to verify that they aren't buying stolen goods. The Project plans to collaborate with Bryan Hance, the founder of stolenbikeregistry.com, one of the Internet's first-ever registries to track stolen bikes, which already has almost 20,000 bicycles in its registry."
If your bike is stolen by someone dumb enough to sell it as-is, this would work great. But most bike thieves dismantle it, shuffle the parts, repaint everything, and file those numbers off. How will a registry help you then?
it's obviously stolen. Agreed, this won't help the parting-out, but if it makes the frame unsellable, that's a hit to the thief.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I somehow suspect that the kinds of people who may accidentally buy stolen goods aren't the sort who would think to check a registry first to see if the goods they wanted to buy were actually stolen... and those who would do it deliberately wouldn't care.
For what it's worth, most stolen bikes have their serial number filed right off anyways... so it's not possible to check them in the registry. Of course, one can just refuse outright to buy a bike that they can't read the serial number of, but I suspect that people who neglect to do this may fit into the above category of person anyways.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
that every bike ad include a serial number, and have a link to the database at the top of the Bikes for Sale page. Tampering would not be easy,SNs are stamped into the frame. Spamming the DB could be a problem
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
It's a good start, but it's far short of optimal.
:(
It sounds kind of like a VIN that cars have, but more accessible to the average person to check on and not as extensive.
Hate to say it, but where I live is the bike theft capital of the world.
It wouldn't do much good, unless it was on each part of the bike.
They steal everything they can, even if it's only a seat or a tire, or even the handlebars. When they have enough parts, they assemble a bike.
The chains careful people use can often outweigh the bike.
Seeing people carrying their seats or occasionally a wheel is not uncommon, and those aren't the thieves either.
So it's a good start, but there needs to be more to really make an impact, and it's going to have to include the industry as well.
Good luck.
No, but it certainly makes police sting operations a lot easier.
No sig today...
I think it's worse than that. This'll only work if it's compulsory and if access is controlled through an otherwise-disinterested third party. Do you want to have to deal with the equivalent of a motor-vehicle-department in order to register a purchase of a bike and to notify on sale or theft?
This isn't like cell phones, where having only a handful of companies denying a reported-stolen phone access to their networks could effectively end phone theft, there are no small points of access to make for that sort of thing.
One can attempt to protect one's self by recording serial numbers in files, adding one's own identifying stamped-in marks to the bike, locking up the bike to make it less desirable of a target in the first place, and when possible, not leaving it where it's out-in-public when not being ridden.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Also, the registry assumes that anybody buying off of craigslist cares. Ftfs:
No one wants to buy a stolen bike
[citation needed]
The UK police have regular bike registering events where you can take your bike and register it for free, otherwise the service is commercial and costs money ( http://www.bikeregister.com/ ).
Wiggle.co.uk simply put the serial number on the new bike check list which came with the bike, so all the customer has do do is keep that list, Can't say if other bike merchants do the same.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
A nice idea, but carbon frames don't have a stamp, or engraved serial number. It's usually a sticker, or similar, which is easily removed or painted over.
My UID is prime!
Anyone who cares about whether they're buying a stolen bike should ask the seller for the serial number. Thieves will balk at providing it, whereas legit sellers should have no problem.
So where's the source code for the site?
Yeah, because the serial numbers and mandatory registrations have done so well to stop automotive theft.
They help a lot when a cop sees the car in question in between wherever it was stolen from, and the chop shop it's going to. Most importantly, it helps distinguish the stolen red Honda Civic from all of the legitimately owned red Honda Civics in the area, so the cops don't spend time chasing after the wrong car.
The reason cops don't go heavily after bike theft is that it's a relatively petty crime: A $200 theft is a very different animal from a $20,000 theft. I just wish that they spent an appropriate level of effort on those $20,000,000 thefts out there.
I am officially gone from
Uh, hi, I'd like to report that noh8rz10 is trying to sell my stolen luggage. I know this because he has my serial number and combination. Is this the right place?
obv your cars get sent across the border to a shady nation for resale. you live in canada?
I'm told the way it works in Amsterdam is that when you move there, you buy a new bike (because you don't know any better). You ride this bike around until it is inevitably stolen. By then, you've found out about the bicycle flea markets, where you can get bikes dirt cheap (because, of course, they are stolen bikes). You buy a bike there. Eventually it is stolen (again), so back to the flea market.