TV stolen

[Edgie70]

Hi all , my ue49mu6500 TV was stolen from my house yesterday after some lowlife broke in to my home , my wife liked the TV so we'll be buying another , my question is ...is there a way of tracking a TV in case this happens again ?? 

[JAMES4578]

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@Edgie70 wrote:

Hi all , my ue49mu6500 TV was stolen from my house yesterday after some lowlife broke in to my home , my wife liked the TV so we'll be buying another , my question is ...is there a way of tracking a TV in case this happens again ?? 

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Hi @Edgie70, so sorry to hear that your house was broken into and  TV  stolen,  I trust you are able to claim on insurance though.   As far as tracking goes do not believe there is  an equivalent of "Find My Phone" and know in some cases authorities question the accuracy.  In theory think can track location via IP address and Mac address  such as on Netflix/Amazon but would this be a priority and police  would need cooperation from the companies/ISP   (often IP addresses are dynamic but Mac addresses are fixed)   In any case you would need the serial number  (Samsung may be able to assist in some regards)  To me limited chance unless anyone knows otherwise.

[SjorsK]

Warning, this is mostly tech  

Well, Mac addresses are handled in layer 2 of the OSI model (The data link layer) and gets overridden by the router used to connect to the internet. Its a horrible way to track devices outside your own network unless an app uploads the information to a server (Which it shouldn't do unless they want to know what the source is for the network adapter). The device might however call back to a Samsung server (or another server) using a different unique identifier. But companies usually only give that kind of information during a formal police investigation when a product is stolen.

Also, companies like Samsung, could at most receive an IP address which is (Even though its dynamic) directly traceable to the person (Based on the timestamp of the time of the connection and internal logs of the ISP), that does however require cooperation of the ISP which they usually don't like to do unless there is clear proof.

One issue with mac-addresses is that it isn't completely unique, the first 6 characters stand for the manufacturer, the last 6 characters are the identifier but... Some identifiers are useable multiple times and they are easily spoofable. They are however unique enough that its hard to get multiple identical ones in the same network, I have however already had a few duplicates at my office that we had to send back

TLDR: Long story short: Contact the authorities and supply them with as much information as possible (Mac Address, Serial Number, proof of purchase etc).

[JAMES4578]

Thanks for the more detailed information SjorsK