This story has been making the rounds. Stolen laptop recovered with Back To My Mac. Engadget summarizes it as:
"An Apple Store employee had a party in her apartment. A couple weeks later her place was cleared out to the tune of about $5,000 worth of electronics, including her new Mac. Days later, a friend sees that she's online and alerts the Mac's rightful owner. Since she was running Leopard with Back to My Mac, owner-girl logged in remotely and activated Photo Booth via the screen-share function. And what do you know, it turned out that the thieves were some 'friends' who were at the party a few weeks back. She took the photos to the cops and -- voila -- busted! The thieves, Edmon Shahikian, 23, and Ian Frias, 20, both of the Bronx, have been charged with second-degree burglary and fourth-degree criminal possession of stolen property. Go go crafty nerdy girl!"
The New York Times has more details. I like this quote: “It doesn’t get much better than their bringing us a picture of the guy actually using the stolen property,” Daniel Jackson, the deputy commissioner of public safety in White Plains, said in a telephone interview on Friday. “It certainly made our job easier. The fact that they knew who these guys were certainly added solvability.”
A few years ago an app called Undercover was released that would run in the background and if you mac is stolen you report it to the company and they can get info from the mac if it comes online, including IP address, screenshots and iSight photos. They've added a new feature that will dim the screen, hoping they bring it to an Apple Store for repair; Undercover recognizes the Apple Store's network and pops up a message saying the machine was stolen.
My PowerBook didn't have a builtin in iSight so I never considered this (iSight photos were the primary feature at the time) but my new MacBook Pro does. Anyone have any experience with Undercover? I like the flat $49 price vs the $99/year .Mac membership needed for Back-To-My-Mac which I otherwise have little use for. I don't love the idea of Undercover sending a half KB of data back to the company, every 6 minutes and don't quite trust that it's non-identifying until a theft is reported.
1 comment:
I have UC installed on both of my Macs, the Powerbook and the Air.
I've owned UC before they even added support for the camera, and while I am fortunate to never have needed it, it is a mild comfort knowing it is on there. They have success stories posted on their site, but who knows how effective it really is. But it's a flat cost and an inexpensive one at that, so it doesn't seem to hurt...
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