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Airtag is the reason of why I stil have my favourite hand luggage. I had just sat down on the train from Zurich to Basel. Suddenly, someone sat down in front o
by helloguillecl 8mo ago
Airtag is the reason of why I stil have my favourite hand luggage.
I had just sat down on the train from Zurich to Basel. Suddenly, someone sat down in front of me. He looked suspicious, but I didn't pay much attention. Just before the train departed, he picked up what I thought were his belongings and left.
Twenty minutes later, already on the way to Basel, I looked toward where I had left my suitcase. It was gone. That was when I realized that the person who had sat in front of me was a thief.
However, he hadn't counted on the fact that I have an AirTag in every backpack and suitcase.
So I was able to see where the thief was and where he was moving. I considered going to retrieve my suitcase myself, but while traveling back to Zurich, I called the Zurich Police and, as the thief kept moving, I told them where he was.
Twenty minutes later I received a call from the police informing me that they had found my suitcase with my belongings, matching the description I had given.
But also the thief and his accomplice.
- ghaff 8mo agoI do use airtags for this purpose. I also expect (and I read) that most police departments won't pay the slightest bit of attention to your reports.
- piperswe 8mo agoI also know from experience that Zurich police will chase an AirTag location with vigor.
- ghaff 8mo agoThat sounds... unique from everything I've heard.
- piperswe 8mo agoI had a backpack stolen from me at Zurich HB. The police sent a car out on the freeway to chase the train the thieves were on, and nabbed them at the next station. The thieves tossed the clothes I had in the bag, but I got my laptop back
- seanmcdirmid 8mo agoSwitzerland sends in swat for noise complaints, they would definitely care about a thief that could be caught.
- kshacker 8mo agoIs it all over or just some parts of the countries? I ask, amused, since I have never been there except a 2 day trip to Geneva in 1992 or so.
- jules-jules 8mo agoSome Kantons are more easy going than others but overall the police are not to fuck around with.
- imp0cat 8mo agoExactly! Forgot to run your washing machine so you gonna start it later in the evening? Bam, next thing you know they are bashing in your door.
- seanmcdirmid 8mo agoTry doing laundry on Sunday……
- alexalx666 8mo agoIn Berlin, if a noise complaint was filed after 22:00, a police brigade of 2 will be dispatched, which is a good thing. They are very polite.
- traceroute66 8mo ago> most police departments won't pay the slightest bit of attention to your reports Its sort of a combination of two reasons. First in many cities, police departments are underfunded. And so running around looking for your stolen phone or whatever minor item is low on their to-do list compared to say, stopping the local drug-gangs from shooting their brains out. Second, for minor thefts most insurance companies just need a quick box-tick "police crime report number" before paying out. So if the police know they can get you off their backs just by quickly giving you a report number, well....
- ghaff 8mo agoAnd it's probably under your deductible anyway. And replacing various cards is your deal with your credit card etc. companies. Relatively few of us carry around a lot of cash.
- Schmerika 8mo ago> compared to say, stopping the local drug-gangs from shoting their brains out I'm guessing people have that impression from TV, but it doesn't seem to match reality. > the data suggests that officers spend relatively little time responding to major violent crimes: 4%, 3.7% and 4.1% in the three locations, respectively. - https://www.freethink.com/society/how-police-spend-their-time https://www.freethink.com/society/how-police-spend-their-tim...
- ryandrake 8mo agoWhich raises the obvious question: If they're not responding to either violent crimes or nonviolent crimes, what are they doing all day?
- reaperducer 8mo agoIf they're not responding to either violent crimes or nonviolent crimes, what are they doing all day? According to a police administrator I once knew, filling out all the endless paperwork that makes the studies possible so people can complain about what little time cops spend fighting crime.
- seanmcdirmid 8mo agoThankfully you were in Switzerland rather than the states, I just never see American police caring about that.
- metadat 8mo agoThe police in Spain will also not care, in my experience. They acted completely helpless regardless of how much information I gave them. My solution now is to travel very light.
- ifwinterco 8mo agoSwitzerland is the Singapore of Europe (I mean this in a good way!) - the state just functions in a way that other European countries can only dream of
- seanmcdirmid 8mo agoI spent a couple of years in Lausanne so am aware. Swiss police don't mess around, you need to follow the rules if you want to live there.
- ornornor 8mo agoCan confirm. Things just work in Switzerland. It’s a tough change to live/go back elsewhere.
- ehsankia 8mo agoThat's awesome. I'm glad that trackers have reached a price point, reliability and form factors that I can easily put one in everything I care about. I even have card ones in my wallet, my steam deck / e-reader case, etc. Also, most of these have usb-c / wireless charging, so I don't have to mess with random cell batteries every 6 months.
- lxgr 8mo agoGiven that the battery in my Airtag lasts about a year, I'd rather have to exchange a CR2032 once per year than to buy a new tracker whenever the built-in rechargeable battery inevitably dies. (I think there are actually rechargeable CR2032s too – best of both worlds?)
- trollbridge 8mo agoThere are, and I got cursed with a BMW that uses one of them. Eventually after 10+ years it finally dies, and it's basically impossible to replace and actually make it work again, so I just have to replace the 2032 in it every few months.
- lxgr 8mo agoOh, is that what they use in their wirelessly recharging key fobs? I've always wondered what happened if the car were to outlive the key.
- F7F7F7 8mo agoMy Dad shipped a M car overseas a decade ago. The is fine. The keys are dead. Since the islands he now lives on has no BMW presence they want him to ship the car back to get new keys.
- fragmede 8mo agoFWIW, there's https://a.co/d/gOk1RkB https://a.co/d/gOk1RkB which takes an airtag and AA batteries, and should need replacement in 10 years. Unless they make BMWs a lot smaller where you are, you can fit it somewhere. Now I just need a retailer that sells speakerless airtags.
- teoruiz 8mo agoBack in 2011 (!) I went to a wedding in Denia, a medium-sized town on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. The day after the wedding we went to a restaurant by the sea to have some hangover paella, part of the wedding celebrations. Weddings in Spain are usually 2 or 3 day affairs. Anyway, since we were travelling back to Madrid later that day we left our luggage in the trunk of the car, not visible from the outside. We locked the doors and off for paella. Or so we thought: some bad guys were jamming the car key frequencies so the car didn’t actually lock. They hit jackpot with my bag: my Canon IXUS camera (I loved that camera), my Kindle 3G, my MacBook Pro and my iPad… with 3G. When we found out later that day we went to the local Guardia Civil and told them the story. I opened “Find My” on my phone and told them exactly where the bad guys were, all the way in Valencia already. You should have seen the face of the two-days-shy-from-retiring officer when I told him that my iPad was connected to the internet and broadcasting its location continuously. Remember this was 2011. So they sent a police car to check out the area and found a suspiciously hot car. They noted it down and did some old-fashioned policing the rest of the summer. Two months later I got a call: they had found them and waited on them to continue stealing using the same MO, until they had a large enough stash that they could be charged with a worse crime. They had found my bag, my MacBook and my iPad. The smaller items had already been sold on the black market. It still is one of my favourite hacker stories. I went to court as a witness and retold the whole thing. The look on the judge’s face was also priceless.
- reaperducer 8mo agoSimilar story for me. Except in Rome, and the ending wasn't happy because all I could do is watch my wife's iPhone go to Tunisia where it disappeared. Still, in those very early days of "Find my" I could see how this was going to eventually change things.
- littlecranky67 8mo agoSimlar (sad) story in Spain, very recent. Airtags and Find My are known by police by now. When my friends bag was stolen, he located it on the police station via Find My. It was located in a residential multi-story house nearby, which was known by the police. The place is known to house several members of organized petty crime. Police told him they cannot do anything as they can't enter the house without a warrant and won't get one just based on his testimony.
- dostick 8mo agoDid you tell them that you have a particular set of… tags?
- varispeed 8mo ago> I called the Zurich Police and, as the thief kept moving, I told them where he was. Twenty minutes later I received a call from the police informing me that they had found my suitcase with my belongings, matching the description I had given. So refreshing to hear. Here in the UK the police would be annoyed by your call and at best would give you crime ref number (usually after mentioning that you will file a complaint if they don't) to take up with your insurance provider.
- robertwt7 8mo agoyeah this should be the standard, same here in Australia unfortunately the police will just pretend to care by taking more information and then does nothing.
- jeffbee 8mo agoI had a camera stolen on a Zürich streetcar and when I reported it to the police they acted like it was the first crime that had ever been reported in the canton, a very serious matter indeed.
- aix1 8mo agoWhen I lived in London, I once came across a criminal operation that was producing fake documents, in what looked like substantial quantities. British & foreign driving licences, National Insurance cards, passports, ID cards etc. Not especially high-quality, but still. Try as I might, I could not get the Metropolitain Police interested. From Royal Mail tracking numbers, I was able to figure out which post office the docs were being sent from. I took a pile of those fake docs to a large police station literally across the street from the post office. Got a crime reference number and was told to keep the docs. :) In Zürich, I once came off my bicycle. No one else involved, no damage to anything except myself. The police were on the scene six minutes later (they responded when a helpful passer-by called for an ambulance). Offered to take my bicycle for safekeeping while I was in hospital, which was jolly nice of them. :)
- FAFOAlex 8mo ago[flagged]
- testfrequency 8mo agoRacist
- obmelvin 8mo agoPeople steal due to economic issues, not their ethnicity.
- sejje 8mo agoAfrica has economic issues.
- obmelvin 8mo agoAnd people have economic issues in Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America. People of all ethnicities all over the world steal. Plenty of immigrants work extremely hard and don't steal. I truly can't believe my statement was 'controversial' and down vote worthy. I mean who cares about the HN points...but really??
- khana 8mo ago[dead]
- trollbridge 8mo agoI need to applaud the efficiency and moxie of the Zurich / Swiss police service. In America, the UK, Canada, etc they'd tell you to fill out a report that nobody would ever read, and also advise you it's probably unsafe to go pick it up yourself.
- rangestransform 8mo ago[flagged]
- GoatInGrey 8mo agoI believe there to be some merit to the notion that it is better for society if many of the generational cycles which lead to crime are broken. Sometimes that involves off-ramps from the road to incarceration. That said, the policy can be, and certainly is, applied in imbalanced ways when justice is pursued over pragmatism.
- zdc1 8mo agoI'm sure at some point it's cheaper to pay people to do nothing and have laws enforced, rather than indirectly paying people to do crime by letting stuff get stolen without consequences. Politically it sounds insane, but it would make for a more trusting society.
- nirvdrum 8mo agoMy experience with small police departments in the US is that they either don’t have the time or the inclination to deal with small property claims. If you’re a business they’ll be there in 10 minutes, but individuals aren’t afforded the same courtesy. Eventually, citizens realize it’s just not worth the cost or the hassle to report a crime unless it helps with an insurance claim.
- tdb7893 8mo agoMy experience with large police departments in the US is that they either don’t have the time or the inclination to deal with small property claims. Some people tried to steal cars (including mine) in my neighborhood in Chicago, we had them on video and they were still in the area and the police didn't do anything. Large police departments also generally won't really do much. Though my friend in Houston did have the police investigate car break ins at his apartment complex but that might be because multiple guns were stolen from cars (so at least there are certain things that will get their attention).
- pkulak 8mo agoMy local police would literally laugh at me if I made that call.
- prmoustache 8mo agoReminds me of a Big Lebowski scene. That is surprising because it is an easy win for them. They would be all after it. I have recollection of french police using civilian appearance to collect a bike thief in a meetup between him and the bike's original owner presenting himself as a buyer.
- stef25 8mo agoLeads ?!
- prmoustache 8mo agoyes that one :D
- VerifiedReports 8mo agoDidn't they start chirping and alert the thief? The anti-stalking measures with AirTags, while we all recognize why they're in place, also greatly reduce their value as anti-theft devices. I've gouged the speakers out of a few and hidden them in my vehicles, but if Apple makes that impossible to do with the new generation... no sale.
- cluckindan 8mo agoThat only happens after 24 hours and only if the tag has been continuously traveling with an iPhone present.
- eloisant 8mo agothat works with Android too
- justinator 8mo agohaha do that in the States and the police will tell you to go F yourself.
- lm2s 8mo agoFunny story: I actually forgot my backpack in the train at Zurich HB and it went to Basel and back again to Zurich HB, where I was able to get from the train. All the while I was nervously looking at Find My, seeing it travel and just hoping it wouldn’t be stolen.
- kavalg 8mo agoSame story in Bulgaria. A backpack with an iPhone and an iPad was stolen from a car. Had to go to the police department to file a written complaint. Weeks after that the devices were still visible in FindMy but police could not identify and catch the thieves. So, airtags/findmy are good, but then it is up to the police to get their job done. I guess Switzerland and Bulgaria are different :)
- hbarka 8mo agoI wish I had this in the early 2000s. The theft of my carry-on bags flying with Alitalia turned out to be an organized crime ring of flight attendants and ground crew. They didn’t get caught until 2013, the whole rotten lot. Never flown with Alitalia since then.