Fun With Security Tags by Ikari (ikari_@hotmail.com)

  If there is one small thing that can be used for a quick laugh, it is an
  adhesive security tag. What is this useful device? I here some of you ask.
  Well, it's like this.

  The tag itself is nondescript, you will find them most often on CDs and
  electrical products at your local Big W. I have often found them inside
  plastic wrapped CDs that I bought from Grace Bros or other stores. It is a
  small square about 40mm on each side. The tag has a thin pink border which
  cuts across one corner to form a larger pink area. There is a trail as
  thick as the border leading from that corner to the centre, where it
  becomes a 13mm-edged square. Between the border and centre square is a
  spiral of thin, flat silver wire, less than a millimetre wide, which
  circles seven times starting from attached to the border before it meets
  the centre pink square.

  I'm not precisely certain how it works, but I believe it is a modification
  of the magnetic induction principle. When one of these squares passes
  through a special detector (you'll most often see them at the exits of the
  store or electrical department) the detector registers an alteration in the
  magnetic field it is generating, caused by the wire spirals. This sets of a
  generally loud, high pitched squealing alarm, as you can imagine it is very
  annoying. Occasionally pushing a trolley through has a similar effect,
  although Big W employees are lectured that only a security tag can set off
  the alarms.

  Already you should be beginning to see the potential for mischief that such
  an innovative anti-theft device can play. The icing on the cake for me is
  that these labels are adhesive. In their pristine form, they often come on
  a slip of anti-stick sheeting, complete with barcode, which the
  shelf-stackers peel off when they stack the CDs in those annoyingly large
  plastic boxes that chain stores love so much. Simply obtain one of these
  squares, and just like the famous 'Kick-Me' note, attach it to a friend or
  loved one's back and observe the mayhem when they enter the store. Better
  yet, smuggle the label into the store (more on this later) and attach it to
  an unsuspecting passer-by. As they didn't beep on their way in, that poor
  person will become an immediate shoplifting suspect. Try to get some
  nervous fool who'll run away and get chased by security, or a boneheaded
  meatbrain who is as likely to hit the guard as talk to him.

  How does one first get the tag into the store to do this, though? Would it
  not immediately go off when you enter the store? Well, no. I made this
  discovery accidentally the first time I tested one of these tags. I went
  down to my local Big W with the tag in my left pocket, wallet in my right.
  As I walked through the entrance, the alarm went off, as expected. I did my
  best to look perplexed, and the door lady asked if I'd just made that go
  off. I shrugged, and she asked me if I had a wallet, which was where the
  problems began. See, as the problem was expected to be my wallet, if I'd
  had the tag in there there'd be no worries. But because it was, stupidly,
  in my left pocket, when I left my wallet outside I'd still set the alarm
  off. Luckily for me the lady turned at that second to briefly address a
  bystander so I whipped out the tag and jammed it into my wallet. Then, when
  I didn't set off the alarm, we put my wallet through, and surprise, the
  alarm still didn't go off. I surmised that because I'd put the tag next to
  something metallic in my wallet (car key) that the pattern the alarm was
  looking for was disturbed and didn't qualify for an alarm. If anyone has a
  better theory, or knows more about these things, please e-mail me

  So you see it is quite easy to hide one of these things and use it later..
  The chick at the department store asked if I had any cards on me, so
  obviously there's some expectation that they may set off alarms (despite
  what they tell the employees). If you can conceal a tag inside a real or
  mock card, or make some bullshit about the tag being part of your exclusive
  bank smartcard's circuitry, you can then hide the tag more effectively
  (though I don’t know why you’d do that, concealing a slip of paper is
  pretty easy anyway).

  Be creative! What am I supposed to do, spoonfeed you? Anyone is creative
  enough to come up with more complex schemes than I've put in here, but
  remember, the more complex the scheme, the higher the chance of failure.
  The best laughs come from simple pranks that pay off highly.

  If you know where a person can buy these tags wholesale, or you're a store
  employee with access to them, e-mail me and I'll repost the information to
  anybody who mails me requesting it. They come in big fat rolls just like
  tape, with hundreds of tags on them. These tags, while useful, are hard to
  obtain, but one may get lucky. For instance, in Grace Bros in Sydney's Pitt
  Street Mall there's "bargain bins" of the shockingest 80s music ever, but
  they're all plastic wrapped with tags inside presumably, and the prices
  range from $1.50 all the way down to 10c.

  [You get an unstuck security sticker when u buy a box of those 50 disks
  from big-w .. ie the sticker still has the backing on it.. its not stuck
  to anything. - ED]

  When you carry off these exploits or if you have any better ones, feel free
  to e-mail the details to me at ikari_@hotmail.com, where I will collect
  them and keep them for good laughs, or perhaps repost them to anybody who
  requests them.

  So for now, keep on stickin' it to those who deserve it most, and remember:
  "The only good teenybopper is a dead teenybopper." Keep on listening to
  Triple J, all across the nation!