Copper crime caught out by new DataDot technology

An inventive Australian technology product is at the centre of the fight against a worldwide epidemic of copper theft affecting energy and telecommunications companies among others.

Crime Stoppers Director for Australia and Crime Stoppers International, Peter Price OAM said: “This is brilliant news. It’s great to see an Australian company leading the way in new technologies that will help reduce crime.”

DataDot Technology Ltd, best known for its microdot anti-theft devices for cars, bicycles and boats, has extended its expertise into industry applications with a new identification system called ‘AuthentiCable’.

AuthentiCable embeds a permanent ‘microdot’ identification technology into expensive electrical conductors to help prevent copper theft and cable theft.

The product has been developed through a joint venture company owned by DataDot and the CSIRO called DataTraceDNA Pty Ltd (DataTrace).

DataDot recognised at the 2009 Crime Stoppers Australia awards ceremony

• Minister for Police Michael Daley today congratulated those who won awards at last night’s Crime Stoppers Awards Ceremony.
• Mr Daley said the support provided to Crime Stoppers by a variety of private companies and organisations was a great example of how the corporate sector could support the NSW Police.
• “Organisations such as Crime Stoppers play a major role in encouraging people to report crimes – which in turn allows Police to apprehend criminals and prevent crime occurring,” Mr Daley said.
• “Crime Stoppers operates throughout Australia and in numerous jurisdictions across the world, and they make a significant contribution to the safety of the NSW community,” he said.
• Click here for the pdf of the Press Release

The awards DDT received were:

Data Dot Technology - for their outstanding contribution to the Crime Stoppers MARINE campaign.
Data Dot Technology – For outstanding contribution to the Crime Stoppers COPPER THEFT campaign during the 2008/09 financial year.

DataDotDNA thwarts bike thieves

The National Motor Vehicle Theft Reduction Council (NMVTRC) today released figures showing a dramatic drop in the theft rate of Yamaha motorcycles. This is a direct result of the company adopting DataDotDNA identification protection across its entire range two years ago.

The NMVTRC Executive Director, Ray Carroll, said the Council was especially pleased with these results as they had long been encouraging motorcycle importers to provide better, permanent identification of their vehicles to help combat theft.

“Motorcycles are very portable and easily stolen”  says Carroll.

“Also, with easily removed Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) and engine markings they can have their identities changed or they can simply be dismantled for spare parts. DataDotDNA fixes the identity problem because the VIN is effectively applied to each bike up to 4000 times”.

The latest theft rate statistics show that in the two years that all new Yamahas have carried DataDotDNA, there has been an 18% drop in theft of new models sold compared to the previous two years. That figure includes bikes stolen and recovered, but the theft rate of bikes stolen and never recovered has shown even better improvement, with the numbers dropping by almost 25%.

Also encouraging is a 23% drop in the number of stolen and unrecovered off-road Yamahas, given that dirt bikes are especially attractive to thieves.

By comparison, another leading motorcycle brand that has not fitted DataDotDNA across its range has shown only a small improvement in theft rates over the same period, which further validates the impressive Yamaha results.

Steven Cotterell, Director/General Manager of Yamaha Motor Australia, says: “YMA is an innovator that is always looking to add value for our customers. Yamaha is the first firm in both our outboard and motorcycle industries to protect its products with DataDotDNA, but we doubt we’ll be the last. We believe that effective anti-theft measures will benefit the whole industry in the long run.”

DataDot Technology Chief Operating Officer, Ben Bootle, added his congratulations to Yamaha. “We have long known of the proven benefits that DataDotDNA delivers to the 24 motor vehicle manufacturers around the world who employ the system on their vehicles, and Yamaha’s success proves the effectiveness and value of the application in motorcycle protection. In addition, the Australian Crime Stoppers organisation endorses all initiatives that use DataDotDNA technology.”
How DataDotDNA works

DataDotDNA is a high grade polyester microdot, around 1 millimetre in diameter, with lines of text applied using a sophisticated laser imaging process. This text includes the unique VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) or PIN (Personal Identification Number) for each vehicle and the manufacturer’s name.

Several thousand DataDotDNA are sprayed or brushed onto high value parts and the chassis/frame of each car or motorcycle using a clear adhesive containing a UV tracer that fluoresces under UV light (Black light). A final layer of security is the inclusion of a synthetic DNA, DatatraceDNA that ensures that the DataDotDNA system can never be counterfeited.

About the National Motor Vehicle Theft Reduction Council

The NMVTRC is an initiative of all Australian governments and the insurance industry to develop strategies and implement programs to reduce the levels of car and motorcycle theft in Australia.

For further information:

Sean Goldhawk, Yamaha Motor Australia

Tel: 02 9757 0011 – Mob 0438 423844

Ray Carroll, NMVTRC

Tel: 03 9348 9600

Ben Bootle, DataDot Technology

Tel: 02 8977 4900

Microdot technology forces crooks to give marine property a wide berth

Sydney, Australia – December 14, 2008 (embargoed until 11am):

• An Australian company’s microdot identification technology is at the centre of a new push to prevent crime on New South Wales waterways.
• The technology is featured in a new Crimestopper Marine Crime Prevention and Safety Campaign launched today by the NSW Minister for Police, Tony Kelly, and the NSW Minister for Ports and Waterways, Joe Tripodi.
• Television advertising in early 2009 will encourage people to report crime on and around NSW waterways and 10,000 water proof bags containing theft deterrent information will be distributed by the NSW Police to boat owners on Sydney Harbour and Pittwater.
• The campaign will recommend boat owners mark their boats, outboard motors, marine accessories and other ‘assets’ with thousands of one millimetre microdots laser-etched with multiple lines of unique code.
• “The unique code on the dots is matched to each vessel through a global database allowing Police to identify stolen property’s rightful owner,” said Ian Allen, DatadotDNA Technology’s Chief Executive.
• The chief executive of the Marina Industries Association of Australia, Mr Colin Bransgrove, said: “‘Protected by DataDotDNA’ signage on boats and around marinas will send a clear message that all valuables are identifiable by Police and are of no value to thieves.”
• Mr Allen said the technology is widely used by car manufacturers in Australia and internationally and is a proven deterrent against theft.
• He said that earlier this month the technology was also made available to help the 1.1 million purchasers of new bicycles in Australia each year to deter thieves and assist police to reunite recovered bicycles with their owners.
• DATADOTDNA MARINE ANTI-THEFT KITS can be ordered online at www.datadotdna.com/marine.

MEDIA ENQUIRIES: Simon Jackson, DataDot Technology, 0419 418 772, www.datadotdna.com

Ian Allen (DataDot) and NSW Police Minister Tony Kelly

Police Marine Commander Mark Hutchens and NSW Police Minister Tony Kelly

DataDots key to convictions in Taiwan’s biggest ever bust of stolen vehicles

Sydney, Australia – 3 November, 2008:

• The largest ever police bust of stolen motor vehicles in Taiwan in late October has proven the value of an Australian company’s technology in fighting crime.
• In Taiwan, the Government has legislated for mandatory ‘whole of vehicle marking’ of cars since 2005 and more than one in three of these vehicles are spray-marked with
  DataDotDNA (microdots), a technology produced by Sydney-based DataDot Technology.
• DataDot’s chief executive, Mr Ian Allen, said that Taiwanese police had been in touch with the company and engaged it’s service to assist with the forensic examination of some the more than 6,000 major components from almost 1,000 stripped cars. The police produced photographic evidence that thieves had been unable to locate and remove the microdots.
• “Even though Dots are fitted to 40 per cent of the new car fleet in Taiwan, only a small percentage of those stolen cars were fitted with DataDots,” Mr Allen said. “ This demonstrates the most important feature of Dots – deterring the thief from stealing those models.” “Importantly, though, where cars were stolen which had been marked with DataDots, police were able to use the dots to establish the identity of ‘donor’ cars and tell us they now expect this to lead to successful convictions.”
• DataDots are tiny microdots (1 mm) that are laser etched with multiple lines of code. The dots are illuminated by a Black light. The unique code for motor vehicles in Taiwan is the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) as allocated by the car manufacturers. While the microdots can be used for identification, vehicles that have been spray-marked
  also carry large decals saying they are ‘DataDot protected’, as a theft deterrent. Mr Allen said many other vehicles recovered in the bust had been fitted with several adhesive labels to comply with the mandatory marking legislation, but police had provided photographs showing that, unlike the thousands of tiny DataDots on a given car, the labels
  were easily removed.
• Mr Allen said he understood that Taiwanese people whose vehicles were marked with DataDots – with decals showing that their vehicles are protected – were also enjoying reduced insurance premiums.

MEDIA ENQUIRIES: Ian Allen, Chief Executive, DataDot Technology, +61 416 240 621

Data Dots to help prevent bicycle theft

Crime Stoppers back new technology in lead up to Xmas

Sydney, Australia – December 1, 2008: In the lead up to Christmas, purchasers of bicycles will for the first time be able to use a micro-dot technology to help prevent theft and identify their bicycles if they are stolen.

From this week, 800 leading bicycle retailers across Australia will stock a $25 do-it-yourself DatadotDNA property marking technology.

The technology is already being used in Australia around the world to help prevent theft of luxury cars and identify stolen parts in brands including SAAB, BMW, Porsche, Mercedes, VW, Audi, Lexus and Lotus.

Crime Stoppers Australia Chairman Mr Peter Price said the organization had entered into an arrangement with Sydney-based public company DataDot Technology Limited that would encourage Australians to register their bicycles marked with microdots.

“Under this initiative, for about $25 Australians will be able to buy microscopic DatadotDNA dots to place on their bikes,” Mr Price said. “In addition a DatadotDNA decal can be placed on their bikes to show they are protected.”

About 1.1 million bicycles are sold in Australia each year with specialist outlets stocking models worth between $200 and $14,000.

Mr Simon Jackson, DataDot Technology’s project manager on the initiative, said the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics research found bicycles were among the top five stolen items in every Sydney suburb and believed this would be also be the case nationwide.

Crime Stoppers Australia chairman Mr Price confirmed that each year thousands of bikes go ‘missing’. “The exact figure is not tracked by authorities, but hopefully with this initiative metrics can be kept.”

Bicycle owners who buy the kit can register their bikes free on a database at www.datadotdna.com/bicycle

“If a stolen bike with Datadots is found there is a good chance you will get it back,” Mr Price said. “The identifying technology also helps police convict thieves who might otherwise claim the property in their possession was not stolen.”
MEDIA ENQUIRIES:

Simon Jackson, DataDot Technology, 0419 418 772, www.datadotdna.com;

Peter Price, Crime Stoppers Australia: 0417 996 600

New Technology will counter massive global textile fraud and counterfeiting

• World-first Australian and New Zealand technology being launched today is expected to counter hundreds of millions of dollars worth of international textile fraud and label counterfeiting each year.
• Unique identifying fibres can now be woven into textiles and read with a simple hand held device.
• The invention, called Verifi TT, a joint venture between Australian listed security technology company DataDot Technology Ltd, and AgResearch of New Zealand, is expected to put an end to clothing makers substituting high quality textiles for low-quality ones using fake labels – and conducting large runs of counterfeit items carrying major brand labels.
• Click here for extra information.

Copper thefts on the rise

The Canberra Times reports on copper theft. Everything from copper cabling to sculptures and cemetery vases are being stolen for resale to scrap merchants and export to Asia. Power and railway companies are using DataDotDNA and DataTraceDNA as theft deterrents. Click here for the full story

South Africa and Vehicle DNA

About 90,000 vehicles are stolen around South Africa per annum, but the number looks set to decrease thanks to a vehicle DNA system that makes a car what criminals call “contaminated”. Click here for full story

DataDot USA and Matco Tools

DataDot USA has been named an associate racing partner of David Powers Motorsport. The partnership delivers retail distribution opportunities with Matco Tools, America’s No. 1 tool franchise. “We believe Matco Tools, David Powers Motorsports and DataDots will be an exceptional team with a mutual objective to stop theft and aid in the recovery and owner identification of stolen tools.” Rick Hughes – CEO of DataDot Dealer Services. Click here for the full story.