Professional photographers are familiar with insurance, which protects expensive gear from loss or damage.   But if you’ve ever had gear stolen, you know that while replacing it is obviously nice, nothing beats actually nabbing the crooks responsible.

Using a free online tool called GadgetTrak, you may be able to do just that.

How does it work?  Once you submit  your camera serial number, the site searches the web for images published with that serial number embedded in the EXIF metadata that resides inside the image file.   If you’re lucky, they’ll return images taken by your camera.   That’s what happened to LA photographer John Heller, who was able to recover more than $9000 worth of stolen camera equipment using this online tool (see video, below).