I recently bought some airtags for my keyrings and thought I’d slip another into my son’s Switch case for when we go traveling. Then i thought I’d fasten on to the inside of my Space Echo. And now I bought a couple more and i was going to mount them on the inside of my OT and DN.
Does anybody have any experience with anti0theft measure’s on their gear? Other than homeowners insurance (in the US, which many people do not have), there’s not much in the way of protection.
FYI: this is my second OT. I just got a mk2 yesterday so i can retire my mk1. i tried to go to Ableton, but the OT is still my best sofa to stage sketchpad and instrument.
I wouldn’t count on UK police to recover stolen gear (even if I was able to provide them an address) and I wouldn’t have enough of a death wish to recover it myself. I just pay for music equipment insurance and hope for the best.
It is a bit clickbait and made barely a minute but he says the air tag will alert the potential theft that there is a AirTag with them via iPhone (assuming they have one). It’s apples measure to prevent stocking and what not.
The mod would disable tracking and make it useless for anti theft purposes.
The warnings are present in firmware and updates, that video makes no sense with how the items are designed.
Edit: It’s a topic i follow so appreciate the link and will look into what they’re claiming (even if i’m a bit squinty on what they are confidently stating), thanks!
There’s plenty you can do to secure wherever your gear is kept but once it’s out and about it’s not so simple. These days you can get GSM diallers for your home security system that don’t rely on traditional phones lines and CCTV that can be viewed remotely for not a lot of money. One of the most useful static devices is a Smoke Cloak or similar. It’s basically a smoke machine that when activated fills the room with dry ice type smoke in seconds. Non harmful, no lasting damage and trust me, when it goes off you just want to get out of the room as fast as you can.
I posted the video as a heads-up because apparently the tag will go off and alert the thief if Apple decides to trigger it. In order to prevent the thief being alerted to the fact that there’s a tracking tag hidden in the gear they just stole, the video suggests stripping out the speaker of the tag.
I just thought it would be of interest considering the original question
i understand the anti-stalking alert. And i absolutely would not approach a thief. The thought/hope is that if I leave it in the green room or at the loading dock, then i have quick notification that it’s gone (as opposed to realizing it 30 minutes later). And if it’s inside the OT as opposed to the backpack and it’s fastened with hex screws (not to mention the OT itself is closed with hex nuts), the time it would take to disable it would give me at least a rough idea of where it was. and at $25ea, it seems like a cheap add-on to my homeowners insurance (and insurance companies are always looking to screw you out of paying you right away).
I don’t like people giving advice on this since it will not help you track down stolen goods (more likely to get you shot) but will give dumber stalkers and those engaging in “geofencing” a leg up.
My home insurance wouldn’t cover my gear, at least not outside the home. I had to find specialist cover from another insurer and even then, modular synths were a grey area.
Can confirm. My MacBook was stolen, I could tell them the address of the ‘fence’ plus all the addresses it went through before that (including a shop). They didn’t even follow up. Apparently theft like this is dealt with by PC’s who have to squeeze it in around their beats & emergency calls.
Right, property protected optimizes for corporations and the otherwise ultrawealthy in some form or another, not a nicked guitar unless it’s accidentally found in some ring that also slings millions of dollars of meth or the cops attending can pretend to have “inhaled fentanyl” to get paid time off work.
One’s energy is best spent on taking inventory (serial numbers/photos and identifying marks) and contacting custom music gear insurers since home insurance will not cover valuable goods worth over a hundred dollars or so.
Hey, as far as I can tell the removal of the speaker would be completely pointless anyway
In that same video, he mentioned something about Apple notifying the thief on their iPhone that a tag this is potentially being used for stalking, is near them. And if that’s the case then what’s the bloody point in removing the speaker anyway?
Gotta be honest, it doesn’t make sense to me either mate!
Yeah, I left the option open to miss some factor I hadn’t thought of (and do love hardware hacks, have an AirTag and help people in some vocation with very weird infosec issues) and wanted to not give in to the clickbait but also to be aware of how the public are talking about safety issues.
I think the best thing for peace of mind is just insurance. There are places like musicpro insurance that specialize in it and make it easy to update gear lists. Covers the gear at home or away etc. and can also cover general studio stuff like furniture, acoustic treatment, etc.
