Ask HN: Recovering a stolen laptop

Is this possible (maybe a business idea here esp. for macs since they don't have virus scanners generally running) :<p>A phone home virus which you can drop into your dropbox and give it your sudo password. It can do funky stuff like install preyproject silently.

The police is a good place to start. :)<p>Also, since you know the IP, do a ns-lookup of the IP and identify which internet provider owns that IP and follow it up with them. They would be should be able to let you know which customer was using that IP address.<p>Note it is not as simple as it sounds cause due to privacy laws, you can't just call up a service provider and demand the identity of a user behind an ip address. Usually, only the police have the right to investigate this hence why you should start with them.<p>Sorry to hear about your bad luck. Hope this helps.

You could try to map the IP address to a street location (using some ip-to-geo tool, e.g. <a href="http://www.maxmind.com/app/locate_demo_ip" rel="nofollow">http://www.maxmind.com/app/locate_demo_ip</a>). This isn't always reliable but it may be good to know if the laptop was accessed in a different state/etc or from somewhere near you.

Check your gmail ip records (at bottom of page in gmail) for latest access and useragent string.<p>Do you have a persistent connection to a vpn or something you can check?<p>In the future, make sure to use something like Prey[1] and <i>test</i> it.<p>[1] <a href="http://preyproject.com/" rel="nofollow">http://preyproject.com/</a>

not much unfortunately. Its in the hands of the police and probably unlikely anything will happen.<p>For everyone else the bare minimal thing you can do is install something like Prey Project <a href="http://preyproject.com/" rel="nofollow">http://preyproject.com/</a> . Good luck