For the past few months, I’ve been afraid to go into places like Barnes & Noble, Target, and the CMU Bookstore. What’s the common element? Well, yes, they all sell books, but that’s not what I’m getting at. The issue is that their theft deterrent gates always go off because of something in my wallet.
Over the past month, I’ve been playing a game that consists of leaving things out of my wallet and walking through the gates, in the hopes that one day, I would walk through beep free. Alas, my efforts seemed to be in vain; another gate, another beep.. Such was the case today. I went ot the CMU bookstore, closed my eyes, said a prayer, and walked through the theft deterrent gates. Beep.
Fed up, I asked the employee if he would mind if I sat there and tested stuff in my wallet to see what the culprit was. Working a hunch, I took everything out of my wallet and put the wallet through. Beep. So it wasn’t the cards, it was my wallet! What a devious little accessory. The employee asked to see it and, as if he put it there (maybe…), he pulled out a theft deterrent device from a pocket that I wasn’t using.
How perplexing. First of all, I don’t recall my wallet setting off the theft alarm at Target when I bought it there. And if it did, why didn’t security at Target stop me and figure out what was going on? Isn’t it their job to stop people who set off the alarm when they leave a store? It appears that security in a number of stores (not just Target) has decided that the gates are broken, or more trouble than they’re worth, and just decide to ignore them all together.
So what purposes are these gates serving? I assume they cost a fair amount of money, and they’re really loud and obnoxious. To some extent, they might be a deterrent themselves (I know I was deterred from shopping at these establishments because of my wallet… but that’s probably not the desired effect). But even a deterrent won’t stop every thief. Nor will the sounding of the alarm. Without a person there to hold a shoplifter accountable, they get away with it. And if you happen to walk through at the same time as 5 other people (I’ve done that before with my wallet… hehehe), it seems like they’re less likely to bother. Who would they stop?
If you’re going to put the effort in, I think the Best Buy approach is good. Sit someone at the door so they can greet people and check things when they set off the alarm. That way the gates aren’t just for show - they’re serving a purpose. And if there’s one thing an HCIer hates to see… it’s wasted technology.
this has happened to me a few times. It seems that J Crew sews in the deterrent tags and I always forget to snip them out. I think the issue with setting of some alarms has to do with the technology. If you ever open those little white plastic things, you’ll see little sheets of mylar (careful, they’re sharp!). Actually, they may not be mylar, but some kind of plastic impregnated with Iron.
The systems that pick up these tags rely on an electromagnetic signature of the tag. The little tags become saturated at a much slower rate than other metallic items. So the gates send out a low freq. EM signal, and measure on the other side how much was absorbed over time. Any difference in the signal and … BEEP BEEP BEEP.
They deactivate the tags by placing them over a magnet and magnetizing them, so that they are already saturated when they go through the gate. That is, they look invisible. Later, you can choose to degauss the tags (like at the library) to reactivate them. However, after you leave the store, the tags can slowly become demagnetized until they are active again. Also, different stores will use tags tuned to different frequencies, so not all alarms will go off for you.
Anyway… there’s a useless brain-dump for ya!