8 ways to protect your bike from theft

Thousands of bikes are stolen every year, so how can you protect yours? Of course, locking it up properly is important, but there are loads of steps you can take besides that to make sure your bike is safe and secure.

In this guide, we’ll go through eight steps you can take to protect your bike from thieves. Some will protect your bike from getting stolen in the first place, and some will increase the chances of being reunited with your bike in the event that it is stolen. All together, they'll help you sleep easy if bike security is a concern.

Read more:

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Set a privacy zone on Strava (or other ride tracker apps)

© Strava

You can hide your address in the settings of Strava

By posting your rides on a tracker app like Strava, you’re advertising to the world where they can find a garage containing an expensive bike. To resolve this, most ride tracker apps offer a privacy zone, a feature that means your rides won’t reveal your address. It works by concealing the exact start and end points of your ride, and you can choose the radius of the privacy zone – people living in a sparsely populated area will need a larger radius than people living in a densely populated city. Additionally, if you’re concerned about security, you can increase the privacy of your Strava account so just followers or just you can see your rides.

Register your bike with the police

Registering your bike can increase the chance that you are reunited with your bike if it does get stolen for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, it means that if someone tries to resell your bike, they won’t be able to do so legitimately. Some bike marketplaces require the seller to input the frame number – if a bike is registered as yours, it’ll flag as a stolen bike. It’s also possible to check whether a bike is stolen by entering the frame number in bike registration services like BikeRegister in the UK.

Secondly, it means that if the police recover your bike, they’ll be able to reunite you with it. The police come across loads of stolen bikes in the course of their day-to-day policing. Often, they post these recovered bikes on X or on a public database, so you can see if yours crops up and ask for it back.

Take photographs of your bike

If your bike is stolen, post it on social media as soon as you can. In most cases, stolen bike posts are shared far and wide by individuals or dedicated stolen bike accounts like Stolen Ride London.

However, for people to spot your bike, they need to know what it looks like. Take photographs of your bike so people can see how it’s specced. Get a shot of the whole bike, plus extra shots of any distinctive details like marks on the frame or non-standard parts.

If it is stolen, it'll make your bike harder to sell, and increase the chance that someone will spot it either online or out on the streets.

Lock it up properly

© GCN

Use a sturdy D-lock for the frame, plus a cable for the wheels

It’s never entirely safe to leave an expensive bike locked up in public, but sometimes you have to. And if you’ve got a town bike or an urban e-bike, locking it up outside places is kind of the point.

We’ve got a full guide on proper locking procedure here, but the most important points are to get at least one highly rated lock, secure the frame and both the wheels, and lock to something that can’t easily be removed.

There are a few locks on the market that are ‘angle grinder proof’, including the Hiplock D1000 and the Litelok X3. They’re expensive – most cost around £250 / $300 – but they are significantly more secure than most other locks. If you’re locking up an expensive bike, an angle grinder-proof lock might be a proportional investment

Whatever lock you’ve got, consider location and time of day. Lock it somewhere with high foot traffic, rather than a quiet corner. It means a thief would have less privacy to work on your bike. And if possible, avoid leaving your bike outside overnight or for extended periods.

Read more: How to prevent your bike from being stolen – GCN Tech Show

Use non-standard bolts

Often, thieves target expensive bicycle components and leave the frame in place. The most at-risk components are your seatpost, saddle and handlebars — and crucially, the valuable STI shifters that are fitted to them. When you rely on the standard bolts, it means a thief can make off with your components with a simple multitool.

To reduce the risk of your handlebars going walkabouts, consider swapping out the standard hex bolts for ones that use unusual tools. There are loads of different options of theft-proof bolts out there. Just make sure that you get bolts that are of good quality and that are the right size for the different clamps on your seatpost and stem.

Use a tracker

Putting a tracking device within your bike won’t stop your bike from being stolen, but it does make it more likely that you’ll get it back.

The most obvious choice is a tracker designed for finding your keys like Apple’s Airtag or the Tile, both of which are small key-fob devices. However, these devices are designed to help you find things like keys. As a result, it’s not ideal for use as a stolen bike tracker.

© Apple

Apple's Airtags can be hidden in a bike

The issue is that Airtags and Tiles notify people when they track them. This feature is there to make sure that stalkers can’t use the device to track victims, but it means that a bike thief would probably get a notification saying that a tracker device is following them as they ride off on your bike. It’s possible to hide Airtags or Tiles in the frame or the seatpost, but there aren’t so many hiding places that a thief wouldn’t be able to dig it out and dispose of it.

You can apply to have the anti-stalker feature removed from a Tile device. However, to protect people from stalkers, Tile will only grant this request if you agree to hand over a significant amount of personal information.

© GCN

The 4iiii 3+ power meter can track your bike

A better option is the Precision 4iiii 3+ power meter, a crank-based power meter that incorporates Find My technology. Interestingly, the settings on this power meter mean it’s less likely to notify a thief. The power meter only sends location data once the bike has been parked for a few minutes, which would likely be once the thief has stored the bike.

If they did work out what was going on, they could stop the tracker by removing the battery. However, it’s likely that at some point in the bike's life, someone will put the battery back in, perhaps when the bike gets sold to a new owner who wants to use the power meter. When that happens, you'll be able to locate your bike.

It's worth noting that if you track your bike and it’s stolen, you should work with the police to recover it. Don’t get carried away with vigilante justice trying to get your bike back — you might end up breaking a law yourself.

Insure your ride

You can’t ever truly protect yourself from having your bike stolen, but you can protect yourself from the financial hit. Different insurance products offer different things, but most cycling insurance will replace your bike if your bike is stolen.

We offer our own cycling-specific insurance at GCN. Our insurance covers you if your bike is stolen or damaged, either accidentally or maliciously. We cater for almost all types of bikes from gravel bikes to mountain bikes, e-bikes to cargo bikes, commuter bikes and more. Learn more or request a quote here.

Don’t buy any bikes you think are stolen

© GCN

Don't buy a bike if you think it has been stolen

This won’t directly make your bike more secure, but by avoiding any bikes that look like they have been stolen, you can do your bit to reduce the value of the stolen bike market. Because ultimately, people steal bikes because there’s good money in reselling them.

So how do you spot a stolen bike? Sometimes the description of the bike gives it away. Is it accurate? Is it generic, for example, ‘red road bike’ rather than ‘2017 Specialized Allez’? That might be a clue that the person who is selling it has no idea what the bike is, which might be because they have stolen it.

You can learn more by looking at the seller’s profile. Are they selling loads of mismatched bikes? Do they have a Strava profile or a social media profile that shows they are a cyclist? None of these things in isolation are proof that the bike was nicked, but they might help you decide whether a bike is safe or not.

What other bike security tips have we missed? Let us know in the comments.