FinderCodes Wants To Help Strangers Return Your Lost Gadgets

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Apple’s Find My iPhone feature is great for whenever you lose your iPhone or MacBook, but what about when you lose other stuff, like a wallet, dog, luggage, camera, keys, or anything else? There are a few GPS solutions that you can attach to everything you prize most in life, but that’s kind of costly.

FinderCodes is a new service that is trying to make QR codes actually useful by allowing people to attach one to everything they love so it can be traced back to them through the FinderCodes database. It’s simple, but more elegant than writing your name, address, and phone number on everything.

A pack of nine tags will cost you $24.99 off FinderCodes website, and you can then just go crazy and throw a tag on everything. They even have iron-on tags so you can lose your favorite t-shirt at a concert and maybe someone won’t steal it and they’ll just scan the tag and find out it’s yours.

Once a found item’s FinderCode tag is scanned on a smartphone a webpage will pop up telling the scanner who the item belongs to. Then they’re given a few different options to contact the owner. You get a text message and email once your lost item has been found. Even if the finder doesn’t have a smartphone they can just type in the tag’s code on FinderCode’s website. It’s not crazy high-tech or exciting, but maybe this will make a few more people use QR codes.

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