Monday, May 12, 2008

Back-to-myMac brings the Mac Back

An interesting story coming out of White Plans, NY talks of a woman who's apartment was burglarized with close to $5,000 of electronics stolen including a couple of Apple laptops and how she was able to help catch the culprits as well as get her stuff back.

The thief apparently was using the computer and one of the victim's friends (who knew her laptop was stolen) noticed a few days later that she was logged in (presumably on some instant messenger) and called her.

The woman was able to use Apple's "Back To My Mac" application on another computer to get control of her stolen laptop and activated the camera in the laptop, taking pictures of the thief. A quick review with her friends and they figured out that the guy was a friend of a friend of one of her roommates who had been at the apartment a few weeks before.

A quick call to the police and they arrested the thiefs as well as getting back most of the stolen electronics.

I'm guessing that she's happy she wasn't one of those self conscious users who tape over the camera to keep something like this from happening and I'm not at all worried about the thief's privacy violation. Of course, the chances of other thiefs really being this stupid to make use of a stolen computer without wiping it clean are probably pretty low, so I'm not sure how often this kind of think can happen (but you know they still do give out the annual Darwin awards).

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1 comment:

Pat Patterson said...

If you've ever caught any of those reality TV cop shows (Cops and Jail spring to mind) you'll know that most criminals are not masters of planning and foresights - they are opportunists, so I'd be surprised if the first action any of them take is to wipe the hard drive.