A bike gets stolen and within seconds a tracker pings a phone somewhere nearby. That’s what 3BO achieved, via WhatsApp escalation. Once an alert fires, it opens a WhatsApp thread that informs friends and family, preset to receive and deal with this lost-bike matter.
They then share it onwards, to neighbourhood watch (we have them all over South Africa – and, if your country?)
So, anyone ends up receiving the notices, has one job: help find the perp – it’s like the friendly neighbour peering and pointing through the window – this time, they’re just using their phone to do so.
Nobody in that thread is confronting the thief. They watch where the bike is headed and enjoy the live location. (Every time police have received a live location instead of a stolen-bike report filed after the fact, they have recovered the bike.)
We do not yet know how many volunteers a neighbourhood needs before a network like this becomes something a thief cannot outrun. The smallest group we have seen pull off a recovery was five people – the largest was 300 people checking the live link simultaneously.