Dive Gear Registration Frequently Asked Questions

What is Dive Gear Registration?

Dive Gear Registration is a service of Cuda Systems LLC located in Florida, operated as a service to the diving community. It provides a means for divers and shops to register the serial numbers of the diving equipment that they own (tanks, regulators, computers, etc) in a centralized database for the purpose of verifying ownership and deterring theft.

How does it work?

You sign up for service off the "LOGIN" button to your left. You then register for a control account. This is a unique identifier that allows you to establish, remove, and control as many individual serial number records as you would like.

Each control account has associated with it identification information - name, address, email address and phone number.

Once you have a control account established, you may then use any of the "logged in" functions to access the system. These functions permit you to add your own equipment to the registry, modify or delete those records, as well as perform searches of the registry for specific serial numbers that may be found.

You should enter serial numbers with no spaces or special characters in them. This insures that a person who searches will not accidentally "miss" due to a formatting difference.

If your search for a serial number produces a "hit", the owner receives an email from the site to inform them that someone has queried the database for their information, along with your contact data. You also receive a search page result with the owner's declared contact data.

You may update, edit or remove records in the system at any time - so as you acquire and dispose of various diving hardware, you can update the database in order to keep it current.

Why is this site needed?

There is currently no centralized place where diving equipment serial numbers are stored and accessible to persons who are buying and selling hardware, or examining it for others (e.g. repair shops, hydro shops, etc.)

Theft of diving hardware is rampant and a growing problem. Shops have tanks stolen, break-ins happen, and individuals have their gear filched from their vehicles, homes, and dive sites.

In addition this site permits the honest person who finds some piece of dive gear to return it to its rightful owner, by allowing them to contact the owner through a secure means that does not involve handing out the owner's identifying information.

What does this service cost?

Establishing a control account is and will remain completely FREE. That is all you need to do in order to query records in the database.

For the present time, registering gear is also FREE. In the future, as this site grows in popularity, a small charge may be assessed for maintaining records. It is envisioned that this charge will be based on the number of items you register, and be very small for individuals and only slightly larger for business concerns (e.g. dive shops) which may have hundreds of individual entries (e.g. tank serial numbers).

We pledge that you will receive at least 30 days notice before any fee is instituted, and that you will have to take an affirmative action in order to subscribe - we will NOT bill you in the future without your explicit consent.

If I get a hit, does that mean that the gear I am searching on is stolen?

Not necessarily. The owner of the gear may have sold the equipment and not removed it from the database, or you may have mis-keyed the serial number. It is also possible, however unlikely, that a piece of equipment of a given type may have a duplicate serial number (for example, across manufacturers.) For this reason you should always check the manufacturer's name that the searching person entered against the search results, and contact the registered owner in the database.

In short, while you will get valuable information from a "hit" in the database, it is not conclusive evidence of ownership. Only the actual owner can confirm the status of their ownership of the equipment in question.

What will you do with my personal information?

Nothing, other than use it for the internal purposes of this site. The owner and operator of this service, Cuda Systems LLC, has as its founder one of the original Internet abuse fighters - Karl Denninger. His dedication to anti-spam measures and software, as well as abuse of the Internet in general, is your assurance that the data stored in this system will NEVER be abused for the purposes of spamming you.

Note that if you perform a search and a "hit" is produced, the owner of the gear will receive an email from the system notifying them that you have searched on their serial number and equipment type, along with your contact information. You will also receive their contact information on the search results screen.

How much gear can I register? I'm a cave diver and have a LOT of equipment!

As much as you'd like. In fact, we strongly recommend that you register every piece of gear you have that has a serial number on it. Yes, we mean your tanks, first and second stages, dive computers, drysuits, etc. This service works best to protect you when you register EVERYTHING you have that is diving related.

Can I register things that aren't diving related?

While the system will not stop you from doing so, its pointless. Other items (e.g. your CAR!) will be stored in the database but nobody in other industries will know to look here before performing work on your non-diving-related equipment.

Why do you want my personal information before I perform a search?

How are password and email address changes handled?

Passwords can be changed at any time. Changes to your account take place immediately.

If you change the control account's notification email address, the system will lock your account until you reconfirm it; you will be sent a new confirmation request email to the address you have named, and you must follow that link to make your control account accessible again.

How quickly are accounts established?

Immediately.

How does the system secure my data?

First, no financial data is ever stored on DiveGearRegistration. However, the password to your account is! As such all access must be via "HTTPS" (SSL-encrypted) sessions over the web; attempting to sign in using a "http" request will fail with an error message.

The system is designed to sign you off automatically if you remain inactive for more than 10 minutes. Your session is also invalidated if you close all of your open browser windows, irrespective of how much time has elapsed. In those cases you will have to sign in once again. This is intended to protect you in the event that you happen to wander away from the keyboard for some reason, or are using a public computer.

Does DiveGearRegistration's system use cookies?

Yes, but it stores no persistent cookies on your computer. All cookies used by the system are session-specific and destroyed when your browser sessions are closed. The software has been designed not to have a "keep me logged in" feature to avoid the security risks associated with persistent cookies being stored on your computer.

Cookies, however, must be permitted by your browser in order for you to be able to sign in. If you completely disable cookie recognition then your control account login will not function.

What if I lose my control account password?

The "Recover" button on the login page will email your credentials to your registered email address. You must supply the email address we have on file for the control account.

I lost access to that account and can't get to the recovery data!

Contact us using the "Email Us" link on the left. Include your name, address, and telephone number. We will call you to verify that you are who you say you are, and once satisfied we can change your password for you to allow you back into the system. Be aware that we will want to know specific details related to your account's activity.

What are the specific Terms of Service?

You can access the Terms of Service (TOS) at any time from your control account by clicking the "Agreement" button, or from here, by following this link, which will open in a new window.

I need more information or help....

Use the "Email Us" link on the left of this page, and we'll get right back to you!