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.

I 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.

Back 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.

Thankfully you were in Switzerland rather than the states, I just never see American police caring about that.

My local police would literally laugh at me if I made that call.

I 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.

That'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.

> 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.

Did you tell them that you have a particular set of… tags?

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