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Archive 2013 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

carstenw
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

I have just come across Lenstag in PetaPixel, a relatively new registry for gear, including serial numbers. The features are still somewhat basic, and there are some glitches regarding manufacturer parsing from the text description and such, but basically it allows you to store an item with its serial number, and it allows anyone to query if a given serial number has been stolen, both of which are independent of the above glitches.

The great thing about this database is that there are now iOS and Android programs, as well as a website, which makes the entry of items trivially easy. There is a photo feature which allows the DB owners to verify that you really possess the items you claim to own. The photo can be either of the item with visible serial number, or the documentation. There is also a CSV export feature.

I have registered my A7 and FE 35, and will proceed to register all my gear in this database, and would encourage everyone here to do so as well.

The URL for my gear is: http://lenstag.com/u/carstenw (until my gear has been verified, there will probably be nothing to see). The last part of the URL can be changed in the settings. I encourage people to use their name or forum handle.

Dec 17, 2013 at 05:51 AM

carstenw
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

This thread should possibly be moved to some other forum, but I would like to leave a forwarding link here in that case, so that as many people as possible might see it and join.

Dec 17, 2013 at 05:57 AM

kroyston
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

Great idea, but I didn't find any information about how it works? If I report my gear as stolen in their DB, what do they do? They mention they get the word out, but to who or does it rely on the buyer of potential stolen gear to first check their registry?

Dec 17, 2013 at 08:51 AM

carstenw
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

It appears to rely on the buyer of gear to check the registry first. Although ideally it would be better if the authorities would just handle it somehow, it probably isn't realistic, especially in some countries, and so for us to have an easy way to enter and check the status of gear is nearly as good.

Of course, if any gear stolen in this manner ever appears on some online forum for sale, the police can be brought into it, even by third parties.

Dec 17, 2013 at 09:03 AM

Tariq Gibran
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

So, I clicked on your gear link Carsten and no gear shows up. Does one have to register in order to view someone else's gear? I don't see a lot of potential buyers doing that if it's the case.

I'm also curious if there might be any potential downsides to making one's serial numbers public.

Edit. Maybe your gear is not showing up until verified as you say.

Dec 17, 2013 at 09:11 AM

carstenw
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

No, you can't see anything yet because my gear hasn't been verified. I am not quite sure what happens to verify it, but I presume someone has to look at the serial number I typed in, and the serial number in the attached photo, and verify that they are the same. That of course doesn't prove that I own it, but as a starting point it is valuable, and I can provide documentation on demand.

I am currently waiting to see how long it takes. I also sent an email offering my help with the project (I am a programmer).

Dec 17, 2013 at 09:18 AM

jcolwell
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

An online, central repository would be a useful place to register gear that has been stolen, but I wouldn't bother listing all of my gear "just in case". I record all of my SN in my own database and keep original receipts. All of my Canon gear is registered at CPS Canada, and most of my gear (alts included) is registered at Canada Border Services, for easy re-entry into the country after using the gear abroad.

Dec 17, 2013 at 09:44 AM

carstenw
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

It might be worth doing anyway. If you have a break-in, and the thief lists it quickly on eBay or elsewhere, the buyer could check if it is stolen right away, without involving police or Canon. This might be useful for example on a weekend.

Dec 17, 2013 at 09:51 AM

kroyston
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

jcolwell wrote:
most of my gear (alts included) is registered at Canada Border Services, for easy re-entry into the country after using the gear abroad.

That's a great idea, not that I've ever had an issue, but I would hate to have to explain to customs where and when I bought all my gear. I wonder if I can do that in the US and China... errrr I mean just the US.

Dec 17, 2013 at 07:57 PM

itai195
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

I think if my A7 and FE 35 were stolen, I'd just file a claim with my insurance company and buy new ones. I could see this being useful for more unique or hard to find items though.

Dec 17, 2013 at 08:03 PM

michaelwatkins
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

carstenw wrote:
I am not quite sure what happens to verify it, but I presume someone has to look at the serial number I typed in, and the serial number in the attached photo, and verify that they are the same. That of course doesn't prove that I own it, but as a starting point it is valuable, and I can provide documentation on demand.

I wonder if the system will use a circle of trust arrangement, something similar to obtaining pgp keys. Probably not quite like that... adoption would take too long to be useful, similar to obtaining pgp keys.

Dec 17, 2013 at 08:53 PM

trevorsehrer
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

Hey everyone,

Google Alerts brought me here.

I'm the guy that runs Lenstag & I'm happy to answer any questions you have & if I miss anything or you'd like to ask me anything personally, feel free to email me at trevor AT lenstag.com.

Here're a couple responses to the questions I've seen so far:

- Manufacturer parsing is pretty simple since most camera models follow the pattern of manufacturer being the first word of a model string. What are some contrary examples to this?

- Re: what does Lenstag do, my plan for Lenstag has been:
- Make the website, see if photographers think it's a good idea.
- If so, make the apps & release them
- If the apps get used, then build partnerships with law enforcement & the pawn industry.
Starting in January I'll begin the third phase & already have some meetings lined up, pending endorsements, etc.
So not too long from now we should have coverage in pawn shops & within law enforcement. Peer to peer thefts are a little trickier, but if we make it much harder to move stolen gear as well as increase the risk of stealing, it should greatly reduce thefts. We're working on a few, but with 150 countries it's taking some time to ramp (so please bear with us!).

- Re: verification process. Yes, a person does look at the photo to make sure it matches what you typed in as well as a bunch of anti-fraud stuff.

- If you add your gear, you can download a .CSV file off the website that's importable into Excel and you can send to your insurance company.

- I did think about the circle of trust thing but I didn't do it for exactly the reason listed (taking too long). I also wanted to keep users as anonymous as possible to prevent Lenstag from getting subpoenas tying people to their images. No third-party logins, names, etc., just email addresses. It's probably overkill & I imagine it'll evolve with time since planned features need some amount of identification, but hopefully we can keep the site pseudonymous for those that want to be.

Hope that helps & check back in occasionally if there are any other questions or I didn't answer the existing questions satisfactorily.

Thanks for using Lenstag!
trevor

http://lens.tg/ios
http://lens.tg/android

Dec 17, 2013 at 11:53 PM

Jorge Torralba
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

Been there done that. Great idea but reliance on buyer/seller checking database killed the idea. Even had a few insurance companies involved. I did this back in 2009

http://www.shutterbug.com/content/registeryourcameracom-launches

http://www.shutterbug.com/content/stolen-camera-registry-web

here is n old screen shot thanks to google

http://www.camma.ch/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/registeryourkamera.jpg

Dec 18, 2013 at 12:50 AM

trevorsehrer
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

Neat! So a couple differences here that I think are important, assuming I'm not mistaken.

- Stolen items on Lenstag are very discoverable. Each stolen item has a public web page that's indexed by search engines as well as being quickly discoverable on the apps with minimal effort. Most (all other?) registries require folks to visit that specific registry to check serial numbers which leaves the curious to check a dozen different registries to see if a serial number is flagged as stolen somewhere. With Lenstag you can just do a Google search for 'lenstag 75165' and see if the number is stolen. It's just as easy on the apps.

- Items verified on Lenstag are strong claims of ownerships since a photograph of the serial number is required. This prevents someone from registering 100 copies of a Nikon 70-200mm F/2.8G AF-S VR II because they know the serial number of one (eg registering all lenses between 20145172 and 20145272).
-- Since pictures are required it makes automated fraudulent registration much more difficult.

- Registering items before they're stolen is super important because it cuts down on the time to report something you stolen. If your stuff disappears & you still have your phone, it's 10 seconds and then the theft is public. Once that's integrated with the pawn industry & law enforcement, it'll be faster than calling 911.

- Lenstag for iOS & Android are a big plus towards convenience.

- Simplest design possible. There is very little friction to starting an account, adding gear, etc.

Hope that helps & please let me know if I'm misunderstanding something.

Best,
trevor

Dec 18, 2013 at 01:14 AM

carstenw
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

Hello Trevor,

Great to see you here! I just found your program yesterday, thanks to PetaPixel, and embraced it immediately and enthusiastically, because the ease of use and iOS/Android programs IMO make this approach more likely to be effective than anything else I have seen so far.

I did send an email with some points, but since we have your ear here:

- The descriptions need to be standardized. In my email, I recommended storing the descriptions separate from the owner/serial number/item storage, and to reference the descriptions via an internal identifier. This allows collapsing multiple descriptions for identical equipment easily, since they map to the same identifier (e.g. Sony A7 and Sony ILCE-7).

- As part of this, manufacturers need to be chosen from a dropdown, not typed in. My Carl Zeiss lens is listed with maker "Carl"

Again, add a way to have users enter missing manufacturers, and only reference the internal identifier, so that makers can be collapsed when duplicates are discovered.

- The verification process will rapidly become a bottleneck, if it isn't already. I would recommend asking users of the DB to match up photos and serial numbers, and having some kind of voting scheme. If 19/20 votes say the same thing, it matches. When people interact with the website, simply show them a random photo and serial number, and ask them to verify it.

And a last point:

There isn't a whole lot of information on the website or in the app about how secure this is. It would help to know that the sessions are SSL encrypted, that the data is never stored plaintext anywhere, that it is properly backed up, what security guards exist against someone breaking in and transferring ownership illegally, and so on. Perhaps add some sections in the FAQ to address this? If this isn't already the case, getting some security experts on board would be good, to help check over the entire handling of the data. If someone were able to hack in and even temporarily switch owner of some piece of equipment, then this would allow them to resell before the error could be detected and corrected, so the backend really needs to be solid.

Dec 18, 2013 at 05:43 AM

dalegaspi
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

- As part of this, manufacturers need to be chosen from a dropdown, not typed in. My Carl Zeiss lens is listed with maker "Carl" Again, add a way to have users enter missing manufacturers, and only reference the internal identifier, so that makers can be collapsed when duplicates are discovered.

i think the way it's implemented now is fine...it's just that their lens/manufacturer db is not that comprehensive yet. as long as lenstag continues to improve the typeaheads, it should be fine. i actually do not like drop-downs...i cringe at the idea of scrolling through names manufacturers and/or lenses...

- The verification process will rapidly become a bottleneck, if it isn't already. I would recommend asking users of the DB to match up photos and serial numbers, and having some kind of voting scheme. If 19/20 votes say the same thing, it matches. When people interact with the website, simply show them a random photo and serial number, and ask them to verify it."

I like this idea because of the verification bottleneck. i also found lenstag through petapixel and registered a few lenses...almost a day later and still pending verification.

Dec 18, 2013 at 11:56 AM

carstenw
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

dalegaspi wrote:
i think the way it's implemented now is fine...it's just that their lens/manufacturer db is not that comprehensive yet. as long as lenstag continues to improve the typeaheads, it should be fine. i actually do not like drop-downs...i cringe at the idea of scrolling through names manufacturers and/or lenses...

In a drop-down, you can typically open it, and then start typing, to get in the right neighbourhood. The problem with type-aheads is that some people ignore them, and then type in new manufacturers (or versions of existing ones, more likely), adding to the general mayhem and confusion

Dec 18, 2013 at 12:12 PM

trevorsehrer
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

carstenw wrote:
Hello Trevor,

Great to see you here! I just found your program yesterday, thanks to PetaPixel, and embraced it immediately and enthusiastically, because the ease of use and iOS/Android programs IMO make this approach more likely to be effective than anything else I have seen so far.

Glad to hear it!

I did send an email with some points, but since we have your ear here:

- The descriptions need to be standardized. In my email, I recommended storing the descriptions separate from the owner/serial number/item storage, and to reference the descriptions via an internal identifier. This allows collapsing multiple descriptions for identical equipment easily, since they map to the same identifier (e.g. Sony A7 and Sony ILCE-7).

I have something similar to this in the works. I had someone go through all of the make/model names that folks have typed in and find what appears to be the canonical/official name for an item and map that back to the item. I just have to write a quick script to update the make/model names & the items will be standardized. It'll probably happen later this month when I have some vacation to implement it.

- As part of this, manufacturers need to be chosen from a dropdown, not typed in. My Carl Zeiss lens is listed with maker "Carl"

Again, add a way to have users enter missing manufacturers, and only reference the internal identifier, so that makers can be collapsed when duplicates are discovered.

The autosuggest seems to generally work pretty well so far and I think dropdowns would greatly increase abandonment. The reason your Carl Zeiss is listed as 'Carl' is because that's the generic pattern I implemented. I'll make a list of manufacturers that have two or more words in them and display those properly in the clients.

- The verification process will rapidly become a bottleneck, if it isn't already. I would recommend asking users of the DB to match up photos and serial numbers, and having some kind of voting scheme. If 19/20 votes say the same thing, it matches. When people interact with the website, simply show them a random photo and serial number, and ask them to verify it.

That's a great suggestion. Here are a few issues off the top of my head I see as dealbreakers:

- It would be an easy way for someone to collect a huge number of serial images and make a bunch of fake claims of ownership. And/or reject a whole bunch of valid number/picture pairs, pissing off huge numbers of users.

- It's not a very privacy-centric thing to do, since users occasionally upload non-serial-number images and the images often have a lot of identifying information in them.

- It would increase the time it takes to get verified since it would be dependent on users using a site that doesn't want to take up any more of their time than it needs to as well as deciding to voluntarily OK images.

And a last point:

There isn't a whole lot of information on the website or in the app about how secure this is. It would help to know that the sessions are SSL encrypted, that the data is never stored plaintext anywhere, that it is properly backed up, what security guards exist against someone breaking in and transferring ownership illegally, and so on. Perhaps add some sections in the FAQ to address this? If this isn't already the case, getting some security experts on board would be good, to help check over the entire handling of the data. If someone were able...Show more →

While I'm by no means an expert, I did do network security for a number of years at a large US university so security is something I'm at least concerned & have some familiarity with. Some thoughts...

- Lenstag runs on Google App Engine so hackers would have to basically hack have to Google to get at the data.
- Lenstag doesn't run an SQL server so run-of-the-mill SQL injections don't apply.
- Lenstag uses XSRF tokens so no one can make a link for you to click that transfers your gear to them.
- All Lenstag sessions are encrypted.
- Passwords are salted hashes and along with everything else isn't stored in plaintext because the App Engine datastore stores everything in binary as plaintext would be too expensive at the scale it operates at.

If you have any specific questions about the security beyond those answers, feel free to email me.

Thanks!

Dec 18, 2013 at 12:33 PM

trevorsehrer
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

carstenw wrote:
In a drop-down, you can typically open it, and then start typing, to get in the right neighbourhood. The problem with type-aheads is that some people ignore them, and then type in new manufacturers (or versions of existing ones, more likely), adding to the general mayhem and confusion

There is a fix for this in my last response, I just need to find the time to implement it (it'll get done by the end of the year).

Dec 18, 2013 at 12:36 PM

trevorsehrer
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Gear Registry - Lenstag - Fight Camera Theft

dalegaspi wrote:
i think the way it's implemented now is fine...it's just that their lens/manufacturer db is not that comprehensive yet. as long as lenstag continues to improve the typeaheads, it should be fine. i actually do not like drop-downs...i cringe at the idea of scrolling through names manufacturers and/or lenses...

I like this idea because of the verification bottleneck. i also found lenstag through petapixel and registered a few lenses...almost a day later and still pending verification.

I'd like to apologize for taking so long on this. The huge response to the app release caught me off guard but everything will be verified by the end of the week, if not earlier.

Dec 18, 2013 at 12:38 PM

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