One of my biggest fears when I travel, is returning to my hotel room to find my camera missing. I try not to take too many of my tech toys with me on the road, but there are some things that simply can’t be left behind.. like my laptop, my camera, my iPhoneS, battery chargers, iPad… wait.. Yeah. I’m just begging to be robbed, aren’t I? And chances are, so are you. So, we can either rethink traveling light, or we can complicate matters even more by finding another one of those “you can’t live without it” applications.
I came across this great web app this morning that could potentially save you a whole lot of grief, should you find yourself with a stolen camera. StolenCameraFinder attempts to do exactly what it says: Find a missing or stolen camera, in a very clever way.
Now there is no promise that this will work 100% of the time, because some cameras simply do not store the essential EXIF data for this process to work, nor does it guarantee that the theif has even posted the needed photos to the web . However, what it can offer is peace of mind to those who have lost a camera. At least they can say that the serial numbers of other photos have been crawled, and if nothing turns up, it is one less thing to feel helpless about.
Heck, if you are lucky enough to get a match, all I can say is good luck in handling that awkward conversation.
Do you have a camera (or laptop) that was stolen? Share your story with us, and hopefully in the mean time something comes up for you. Good Luck!
Author Credit: Adam Dachis
How does it work? Many cameras save serial number information in the EXIF data of every photo you take. StolenCameraFinder extracts this data and looks for that same serial number data elsewhere on the internet. If it finds it, you can find photos taken with that camera and potentially locate the thief.
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