I think you overestimate the IQ of the average opportunistic bike thief.
I don't leave my bike laying around much, it would likely be a fast snatch at a lunch stop, and that's pretty brazen.
My hopefully quick detection, won't give them a lot of time with which to sanitize the bike.

If all I get back is the tracker, at least I tried.....and it will still look good on the police/insurance report.


Barry

Or feed it to a Wolf !

OH, hold on, that's been done already.

Barry

Wolves aren't exactly easy to find!

They found one just fine in the movie.

The thief would want to avoid being tracked, so ditch the tracker fast and leave.

They have no reason to spend time to put some adhesive on it and wait for a stop light for a car or bus to come to a stop next to them. Too many spy movies?

It's a joke.

That is correct.

A couple months ago I had just finished a week long backpacking trip, was taking off my hiking boots and putting on shoes that were better suited for driving, someone in the parking lot says - hey, is that a wolf? Fortunately my camera was right there. Photo is cropped from the original, I only had my point and shoot camera. About 10 seconds after the photo, it was gone.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...4fcaae55c5.jpg

Northern Minnesota, a few miles north of Lake Superior.

Too bad I did not have a tracker handy, I could have run towards it and tried to put a tracker on it. <Joking.>

I think that is the first time I have seen a wolf in at least five years, that was a real surprise. They always see you before you see them.

Wolf? Or Silver Back Coyote? Lets do a poll.

+1 on the Apple Air Tag idea. I was thinking about picking one up myself for this very purpose.

Quick note on this three month old thread, the New York Times had a good article on airtags, tiles and a GPS tracking device. Not a lot of detail on the devices or how well they worked, it was more on the legalities, ethics and using them to track people. Paywall. Article at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/11/t...veillance.html