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Unless someone posts a photo of the stolen car with the numberplate still on, how would you identify YOUR car that way? Its not like cars are unique pieces. Sam

Unless someone posts a photo of the stolen car with the numberplate still on, how would you identify YOUR car that way? Its not like cars are unique pieces. Same for bikes or anything else...

kube-system 9mo ago
You don't have to precisely identify it, you only need to narrow it down to a high likelihood of being your vehicle. Then you can verify the VIN in person. It wouldn't be hard to narrow things down: Year/make/model/trim/color/region/timeliness will narrow down to a very small if not already unique subset of vehicles. And on top of that vehicles may often have unique stickers, accessories, or scratches which can further strengthen the case. Flock e.g. uses this data in their vehicle identification algo.
- conductr 9mo ago
  I have no photos of my vehicles to initiate a search this way. Am I an outlier and it’s normal for people to keep vehicle pictures handy?
  - kube-system 9mo ago
    If you had photos of your vehicle, presumably you'd know where you took it. The idea here is that you find a picture of your vehicle that the thief took, and use this to find the location of where the thief has your vehicle.
    - jaredhallen 9mo ago
      That seems like a pretty rare situation compared to any number of alternative use cases. Most of which are decidedly less wholesome.
      - kube-system 9mo ago
        It is literally the “real world example” from the article.
        conductr 9mo ago
        I may have misunderstood, admittedly I just scanned it, but if you or law enforcement have to scan the universe of apps/internet to find a picture before this is useful… it’s not useful. Your starting point is a needle in a haystack. I thought you uploaded a picture you already had, it does the scanning, and a hit might look like “some rando posted a selfie at Zilker Park 20 minutes ago on insta and that car was in the background”.
        kube-system 9mo ago
        Again, the example in the article is to find the vehicle being resold online. There are only a few popular websites where people sell vehicles secondhand in any particular area, and you can easily filter to the characteristics of the car you are looking for. To search all of them is a 15 minute exercise. Although your example may be quite viable in a repossession scenario where the possessor is known but the location is not.
        conductr 9mo ago
        Right, see that is the example they went in depth on. I thought it was helping identify the chopshops and hideouts more directly as they indicated in the bullets. This part still is the sticking point; > When browsing Craigslist, I came across a regular car listing that showed a vehicle with buildings visible in the background. The listing claimed the vehicle was located in San Francisco. ...... Superbolt returned precise latitude and longitude coordinates that, when entered into Google Maps, revealed an exact match to the buildings visible in the listing photos. How often do people find their stolen vehicles posted on CL/marketplace? Do police have resources to constantly browse hoping they see a similar picture of their stolen vehicles? How do they match it to the one they are looking for? Eg. if this was a cop, they may think, this vehicle matches the description of the stolen car. And this AI tells me the picture was taken at these exact coordinates (not super useful as this looks like a public place and I'm sure not where the vehicle is being stored). They still have to go out, meet the "seller", check the VIN or otherwise confirm it is the correct stolen vehicle they are looking for, then they get an arrest and recovery. But, what if there are a dozen vehicles for sale matching said description. They now have to arrange to visit them all until they find the match or exhaust their options. How is this AI adding any value given with & without it the process looks the same; find listing, ask "seller" to meet, meet, evaluate. You don't need this AI to ask the "seller" to meet up and pretend to be an interested buyer. FWIW, this looks like it could be a white VW Jetta to me. There are 118 in SF bay area right now just on Autotrader (granted, the hatchback is a further narrowing feature, but that's not super common either). No police department I've ever heard of has the resources to check on all these listings. If the thief stole it in SF but listed it for sale in Seattle or LA or anywhere else, how would anyone know? That's the haystack part, it's a big haystack.
    - pkaeding 9mo ago
      Why would a thief post a photo of a stolen vehicle? Are they trying to sell it whole? I can't imagine that is very common, since the buyer won't be able to register it, right? Aren't most stolen vehicles disassembled (chop shops, etc)?
      - defrost 9mo ago
        > Why would a thief post a photo of a stolen vehicle? Casual small time occassional car thieves might do this, receivers of stolen cars as payment for other debts owed by a thief may do this ... but it's somewhat atypical. > Aren't most stolen vehicles disassembled (chop shops, etc)? In the organised bigger scale operations vehicles are dealt with for the greatest profit with least risk. A good many are stripped for the parts - the more popular the car, the larger the parts after market. A suprising number of cars from developed countries are shunted whole into containers and sold elsewhere about the globe. eg:- “Each year, hundreds of thousands of vehicles are stolen around the world, yet the initial theft is often only the beginning of a vehicle’s journey into the global criminal underworld. “Stolen vehicles are trafficked across the globe, traded for drugs and other illicit commodities, enriching organized crime groups and even terrorists. https://www.interpol.int/en/News-and-Events/News/2025/INTERPOL-targets-stolen-vehicle-trafficking-in-West-African-police-operation https://www.interpol.int/en/News-and-Events/News/2025/INTERP...
        conductr 9mo ago
        Going back to the the article, you have to find a picture of your exact car online somewhere, then use GeoSpy to tell you it was stolen in the US and was photographed in Columbia, then you go to that place in Columbia to find it's not parked there anymore, so you contact the person who made the post/listing and try to arrange a meeting, then you confirm it's your vehicle, then... what exactly? Local police are doing none of this btw.
        kube-system 9mo ago
        When an insured vehicle is stolen, it soon belongs to the insurance company. I think it would be helpful for insurance to know whether a stolen vehicle is across town or in Columbia. If it's nearby they can recover it and the salvage value for it, and if it's in Columbia they have some evidence that their resources are better spent elsewhere.

Unless someone posts a photo of the stolen car with the numberplate still on, how would you identify YOUR car that way? Its not like cars are unique pieces. Same for bikes or anything else...

kube-system 9mo ago

You don't have to precisely identify it, you only need to narrow it down to a high likelihood of being your vehicle. Then you can verify the VIN in person. It wouldn't be hard to narrow things down: Year/make/model/trim/color/region/timeliness will narrow down to a very small if not already unique subset of vehicles. And on top of that vehicles may often have unique stickers, accessories, or scratches which can further strengthen the case. Flock e.g. uses this data in their vehicle identification algo.

conductr 9mo ago
I have no photos of my vehicles to initiate a search this way. Am I an outlier and it’s normal for people to keep vehicle pictures handy?
- kube-system 9mo ago
  If you had photos of your vehicle, presumably you'd know where you took it. The idea here is that you find a picture of your vehicle that the thief took, and use this to find the location of where the thief has your vehicle.
  - jaredhallen 9mo ago
    That seems like a pretty rare situation compared to any number of alternative use cases. Most of which are decidedly less wholesome.
    - kube-system 9mo ago
      It is literally the “real world example” from the article.
      - conductr 9mo ago
        I may have misunderstood, admittedly I just scanned it, but if you or law enforcement have to scan the universe of apps/internet to find a picture before this is useful… it’s not useful. Your starting point is a needle in a haystack. I thought you uploaded a picture you already had, it does the scanning, and a hit might look like “some rando posted a selfie at Zilker Park 20 minutes ago on insta and that car was in the background”.
        kube-system 9mo ago
        Again, the example in the article is to find the vehicle being resold online. There are only a few popular websites where people sell vehicles secondhand in any particular area, and you can easily filter to the characteristics of the car you are looking for. To search all of them is a 15 minute exercise. Although your example may be quite viable in a repossession scenario where the possessor is known but the location is not.
        conductr 9mo ago
        Right, see that is the example they went in depth on. I thought it was helping identify the chopshops and hideouts more directly as they indicated in the bullets. This part still is the sticking point; > When browsing Craigslist, I came across a regular car listing that showed a vehicle with buildings visible in the background. The listing claimed the vehicle was located in San Francisco. ...... Superbolt returned precise latitude and longitude coordinates that, when entered into Google Maps, revealed an exact match to the buildings visible in the listing photos. How often do people find their stolen vehicles posted on CL/marketplace? Do police have resources to constantly browse hoping they see a similar picture of their stolen vehicles? How do they match it to the one they are looking for? Eg. if this was a cop, they may think, this vehicle matches the description of the stolen car. And this AI tells me the picture was taken at these exact coordinates (not super useful as this looks like a public place and I'm sure not where the vehicle is being stored). They still have to go out, meet the "seller", check the VIN or otherwise confirm it is the correct stolen vehicle they are looking for, then they get an arrest and recovery. But, what if there are a dozen vehicles for sale matching said description. They now have to arrange to visit them all until they find the match or exhaust their options. How is this AI adding any value given with & without it the process looks the same; find listing, ask "seller" to meet, meet, evaluate. You don't need this AI to ask the "seller" to meet up and pretend to be an interested buyer. FWIW, this looks like it could be a white VW Jetta to me. There are 118 in SF bay area right now just on Autotrader (granted, the hatchback is a further narrowing feature, but that's not super common either). No police department I've ever heard of has the resources to check on all these listings. If the thief stole it in SF but listed it for sale in Seattle or LA or anywhere else, how would anyone know? That's the haystack part, it's a big haystack.
  - pkaeding 9mo ago
    Why would a thief post a photo of a stolen vehicle? Are they trying to sell it whole? I can't imagine that is very common, since the buyer won't be able to register it, right? Aren't most stolen vehicles disassembled (chop shops, etc)?
    - defrost 9mo ago
      > Why would a thief post a photo of a stolen vehicle? Casual small time occassional car thieves might do this, receivers of stolen cars as payment for other debts owed by a thief may do this ... but it's somewhat atypical. > Aren't most stolen vehicles disassembled (chop shops, etc)? In the organised bigger scale operations vehicles are dealt with for the greatest profit with least risk. A good many are stripped for the parts - the more popular the car, the larger the parts after market. A suprising number of cars from developed countries are shunted whole into containers and sold elsewhere about the globe. eg:- “Each year, hundreds of thousands of vehicles are stolen around the world, yet the initial theft is often only the beginning of a vehicle’s journey into the global criminal underworld. “Stolen vehicles are trafficked across the globe, traded for drugs and other illicit commodities, enriching organized crime groups and even terrorists. https://www.interpol.int/en/News-and-Events/News/2025/INTERPOL-targets-stolen-vehicle-trafficking-in-West-African-police-operation https://www.interpol.int/en/News-and-Events/News/2025/INTERP...
      - conductr 9mo ago
        Going back to the the article, you have to find a picture of your exact car online somewhere, then use GeoSpy to tell you it was stolen in the US and was photographed in Columbia, then you go to that place in Columbia to find it's not parked there anymore, so you contact the person who made the post/listing and try to arrange a meeting, then you confirm it's your vehicle, then... what exactly? Local police are doing none of this btw.
        kube-system 9mo ago
        When an insured vehicle is stolen, it soon belongs to the insurance company. I think it would be helpful for insurance to know whether a stolen vehicle is across town or in Columbia. If it's nearby they can recover it and the salvage value for it, and if it's in Columbia they have some evidence that their resources are better spent elsewhere.