What happens to stolen GPS units?
Stolen stuff is sold in plain sight all of the time. eBay, Craigslist, pawnshops, fleamarkets, whatever. If I came across a locked GPS, I would try reflashing it with the original firmware (mapsets and software for most popular models is available on BitTorrent). Or I would call TomTom customer service and claim I forgot my password. But that’s me. A crackhead who wants a quick $20 would probably just toss it. FWIW, the only thing that locking your GPS does is inconvenience the thief after it is stolen. Most of the time when stuff is stolen from a car it’s a smash-and-grab. The thief isn’t going to bust out your window, rip the GPS off the dash, turn it on, see it’s locked, and put it back. According to the cop my girlfriend talked to after her iPod was stolen out of her car, just putting valuables in the glovebox is an effective deterrent. Thieves won’t risk breaking into a car unless they can see something worth stealing.
FWIW, the only thing that locking your GPS does is inconvenience the thief after it is stolen. Of course. It would only be if everyone/almost everyone locked theirs and methheads knew and cared about this fact that the PIN feature would be much of a deterrent. However, since my question is primarily about what happens to these units after they’re stolen, it seemed worthwhile to mention PINs.
Given this, I imagine that the thief had something in mind to do with the GPS units (and whatever else) he planned to steal that night. But what might this be? I suspect you are over thinking this and assuming too much on behalf of the thief. I think it is more like: Thief walks past car, sees something of potential value and breaks the window to take it. He doesn’t care, at this stage, if he can realise any of that value. He’ll only find that out if he can’t shift it. If he can’t he just throws it away. Therefore he’s lost nothing and the ‘deterrent’ has only cost him time to find out if it is locked or not later. Petty theft isn’t about carefully planning disposal techniques – that is the reserve of larger, more expensive and unwieldy items (like cars for export). It’s about taking things of value and finding out (once you have them) if you can make some money off your now having them rather than the original owner.
Unlocked units: a bloke at the pub sells them. Locked units: tossed, or a bloke at the pub sells them. indyz’s last paragraph is spot-on. The thief ain’t gonna check them; the only person who might is the fence (who then kicks the thief for trying to pass on unsaleable crap), or his point-man in the pub (who doesn’t want a kicking from a pissed-off customer who bought an unusable GPS last week). As an aside: I once had a mate who was in the habit of buying car stereos from “a bloke at the pub”. Sometimes still with bits of dashboard attached. He must have bought at least a dozen that were pin-locked, trying to find one that wasn’t, before I pointed out to him that quite often the default PIN is often something simple like the last 3 or 4 digits of the s/n, or printed on a sticker inside the cover. He then went through his purchases, found one that he could unlock, and sold the rest down at the pub…
