A comprehensive list of stolen bikes?

[dottigirl]

(Please let me know if there is a thread which already covers this.)

I've been looking at some secondhand bikes on Gumtree and eBay etc which I strongly suspect are stolen - e.g. just Google 07960930284: four bikes, two names, loads of credible reasons for sale - and tried to check them out, looking for a corresponding stolen notice, or even a vague description. Three of them also say they have proof of purchase.
(Many of my friends with kosher bikes wouldn't be able to produce their manuals or pop!)

There's so many websites, it's a difficult job to check them all. If I go to see a bike, apart from relying on gut instinct, how can I check comprehensively to see if it's stolen. I want to be able to enter a description and/or frame number and feel confident it's no one else's darling.

Also, I've registered my bikes with bikeshepherd and immobilise.com including the frame numbers, and will be off to get them marked which I believe is covered by bikeregister? Does this do any good?

Thanks.

[StolenBikes]

Hi,

The best way to search them all is to search "Stolen *MAKE MODEL*" in google. I run one of the registers, and have recognised this problem, I already approached Immobilise to see if they would be willing to work on a solution but they declined.

The others have there webpages searchable, so I plan to make a website that will figure out if a bike is stolen hopefully based on the Google API (after I've finished some other stolen bike related projects).

[lazydog]

If you go to http://bikeshd.co.uk/ this lists all bikes for sale in London on both Ebay and Gumtree!

[StolenBikes]

FindThatBike does the same for the whole country.

[johnsouthwales]

hi stolenbikes!!

i was thinking about this last night, and thought how big would a spreadsheet be if all stolen bikes were catalogued? plus the daily updates. it would be massive. It seems so strange for immobilise to decline, as you know by now the tweets have been aimed at it is no good having so many databases that are not centralised.

if you look at my tweets, immobilised have told that all police forces use immobilise. i questioned this when looking at their website, it is clear that all forces are not on their list.

how can a force who uses bikeregister.com check on a stolen bike that came from an immobilised area? and vice-versa. if the readers can read both, then fine. but the readers are at the station usually in the property office. -so they have to take the bike in first. the police don't carry around a reader, but they do carry around a UV reader if that's any use.

immobilse use a widget that gets rammed down the seat tube as you know. and someone said it took them 30 seconds to remove it.
so the last roll of the dice, using their immobitag - dropping the transponder down into the seat tube into the frame. dyfed-powys clearly state that bikeregister.org is their preferred method. why, i'm not sure.

which leads to another situation, say leicestershire for example. if they say immobilise is their preferred method, and you get a shedload of cyclists registering with bikeregister.com, and a lot of bikes stolen in leicestershire, doesn't that lead to confusion? if someone has their bikeregister label torn off, i won't be able to tell if it was a bikeregister sticker or not. then again, if it was an immobilised sticker that was torn off, i won't be able to tell. there are too many flaws in the system, and the first thing i recognised is that having more than one database is no good and i've said that all along.

as it seems ridiculous for the police to continue to assume that one bike theft will remain localised between one force and their neighbouring force. stolen bikes end up all over the place eventually

i was told that all registration companies are cross-referenced. i can't see how.