Matt Schonert

Among other splendid gifts, I received a new vacuum cleaner for Christmas. In accordance with my personal household inventorying policies, I immediately filled out Hoover’s mail-in warranty registration card. In addition to wanting to know my age, income level, and how often I clean my house, they also wanted to know if I own, or plan to purchase within the next six months:

• a CD-ROM drive?
• a compact disc player?
• a subscription to an online service (AOL, CompuServe)?

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A few weeks ago, my brand new $300 cell phone was stolen in a restaurant. Even if the police cared about this kind of thing (hint: they don’t, despite that cell phones routinely cost more than bicycles and can contain more confidential information than your tax returns), it would be hard to prove anything without a serial number, and I didn’t have mine because I’d only had the phone for a few days.

So I started a spreadsheet inventory of everything I own, including the following points of detail:

• item
• serial number
• model number
• date of purchase
• retailer (and customer service phone no.)
• warranty information (length and approximate terms)
• purchase price
• estimated present-day value
• memo

There are several uses for this information.

1. Law enforcement will be able to identify property that has been stolen from you.
2. You will be able to prove losses to your insurance company in the event of burglary or destruction of goods.
3. If an item needs to be returned, repaired, or replaced, you have all the phone numbers in one place. You don’t need to dig through a box to find the manual and customer service line for a particular item. And when you do call the company for service, the representative won’t need to wait for you to fumble around with the device trying to find the number on the back of your computer, or trying to determine what model you own.
4. If you’re about to go bankrupt, you can sort the sheet by “estimated value”, greatest to least, and sell whatever you need least, starting at the top.

Under “memo” I noted other identifying details, such country of origin, and so on.  In that area, I recorded  MAC addresses (a unique identifier) for computer networking devices such as laptops, wireless routers, and network cards. That way, if the thief logs onto the wireless at Starbucks or a nearby university before selling my laptop on eBay, a network administrator can confirm whether my device has been used on a particular network router.

For items with multiple components, such as my home computer, I wrote down serial numbers for each major component in the device (hard drives, memory, etc.) It may be overkill, but I won’t be complaining about the time I wasted on this spreadsheet when a detective links a suspect to my case based on the serial number for compact flash memory card after the thief has “parted out” my equipment.

There are several reasons why doing so earlier is better than doing so later. I hope to accomplish the following.

• Save an of time and frustration in the event of theft or disaster. (If the police or insurance company asks you what was lost, I click “Print”, circle the missing items, and hand them the list.)
• Avoid arguments and resentment with roommates over ownership disputes.
• Have fun.

In this post I have ignored an obvious and admittedly more serious threat specifically associated with electronic devices — identity theft. I continue to secure my data with encryption, regular backups, and vigilance.

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