The Future of Personal Security

PROTECT YOUR CAR

Unmistakable identification keeps car thieves away from your ride

THE THREAT:
More than one million vehicles are stolen in the U.S. every year, with a total value of over $7.6 billion. And once thieves remove license plates and vehicle identification numbers, there´s no way of knowing who the vehicles once belonged to.

THE SOLUTION:

DataDot Technology-a startup company in Australia, which has the highest rate of vehicle theft in the developed world-has devised a way to cover valuable items in identifiers as small and invisibly scattered as hairspray droplets on a bouffant. Transparent DataDots are laser-etched with an identification number unique to you and glued to every internal surface of your car, boat or laptop. The sheer number of sand-grain-size dots on treated possessions-up to 5,000-makes it all but impossible for thieves to take them off and sell the harvested parts. In contrast, existing theft-deterrent systems such as a LoJack can be hidden in only one of about 20 places, and so can be removed much more easily.

Cops determine who stolen property belongs to by using a 50x magnifier to read the dots. If a person reporting a theft mentions that the item was Data-Dotted, police departments can access a company-run international database to find out if the car has turned up elsewhere. â€The system really works in favor of the police,†says Scott McKeever, program-development director for DataDot´s American division. â€They only need to locate one dot to determine an item´s owner, whereas thieves would have to remove thousands of them in order to resell a stolen item.â€

Although DataDots are still largely undiscovered in the U.S., McKeever predicts that as awareness grows, they will become highly effective deterrents. In a three-year study, Australia´s National Motor Vehicle Theft Reduction Council found that cars with DataDots were 80 percent less likely to be stolen and never recovered than cars of the same make without DataDots. â€Once the word spread among thieves,†McKeever says, â€it was clear they wanted to stay away.â€

THE ETA:
DataDot is just starting to test the consumer waters here. As part of a pilot program at auto dealerships in a dozen states, the company will apply around 1,000 dots to your new vehicle for $300-and offer you a $5,000 refund on top of regular insurance benefits if your car is stolen. The royal DataDot treatment should go nationwide this year, but in the meantime, you can obtain a DIY kit online. These kits cost about $25 and contain 500 dots that can be applied at home with a swab. Schools including San Francisco State University have started encouraging students to use them on laptops and iPods. -Elizabeth Svoboda