Here is a story from Gainesville, Florida about a pair of shoplifters who were caught using a magnet to remove the sensor tags from merchandise so they could steal it. The story makes it sound as if this is a brand new method of theft.

This isn’t new, shoplifters are always trying to defeat the tags that retailers use to protect their merchandise. Most of the time, they just cut the tags off or find some way to pry them off. However, the use of a magnet to defeat the tag has been used for years. The reason this is not common is because the magnets used to defeat the tags are made in a special shape with special polarity properties, and they are very hard to find.

The key here is that these two were caught, probably due to great awareness on the employees’ part. Thieves will always be trying to find ways to defeat security measures. No security measure is 100% effective, 100% of the time, but if the measure used slows down the thief enough to give store personnel a chance to observe them, the likelihood of the shoplifter’s success is greatly reduced.

The moral of the story is that tools are just that, tools. If you rely 100% on your tools, and not on the people who use the tools to use them effectively, they won’t work for you. My grandpa used to say, “That hammer won’t swing itself”. I agree, and I would add that those tags won’t protect your merchandise by themselves, either.

Popularity: 43% [?]