Your Belongings
Students own more expensive consumer goods per head than the rest of the population. It is no surprise then that students often become a target for opportunist thieves.
Ever wondered how you would replace your laptop, music player, digital camera, and other electrical equipment if they were stolen? Make sure you have adequate insurance cover. Keep lists of the make, model and serial numbers of your electronic items to help police track them down if they are stolen.
Marking your property is one of the simplest and most effective ways of protecting your possessions. Mark your property with the initials of your university (e.g. DU - Dundee University) and your student ID number - this makes it harder for a thief to sell stolen goods and can help us to return items to you.
Tayside Police recommend two ways to mark your property:
- Engraving or punching your address and postcode into your property.
- Marking antiques or valuable property with an ultra-violet marker.
How to Do It
For the first method, use a fine drill or sharp-pointed tool (inexpensive permanent marking kits can be purchased at most home improvement stores) to neatly mark your equipment with your address and postcode.
For bicycles, mowers, engines and other heavy metal objects, you can use a punching tool and a hammer to mark your address and post code.
For the second method, you can purchase permanent ultra-violet (UV) marker pens and mark the same information on more valuable possessions. The marks will be invisible to the naked eye.
However, UV marks will fade with time and should be redone periodically.
When police recover stolen property, they search them for any markings that might identify the owners, so this is a good way to ensure that you can get your property back should it ever be stolen.
