It is nice to hear a story involving the police in which they're helpful and effective rather than spraying protesters/journalists/bystanders with pepper-spray.
I had a similar experience that took place over the course of a single day in which I tracked down that thieves in real-time and confronted them in a parking lot. Instead of calling the cops, and since they had taken money and not an actual laptop, I had them give me collateral and gave them 2 weeks to give me money back in exchange, which they did after.<p>I actually did write up and submit a police report, but it was about 3 months before I heard anything from the police.<p>Lessons learned: (1) sometimes it's better to roll up your sleeves and do it yourself and (2) some (most?) people legitimately want to come clean.
Too bad that some guy is going to spend years and years in prison over drug charges when he should really only be charged with theft but I guess the lesson is don't go stealing traceable devices when you're running a dope operation.
Great read.<p>I am going to make all my mobile devices hit a webpage on a few of my servers silently on bootup (if there is a web connection) so I would at least have that ip. Also embedding a hidden image into the browser about:blank (startup) page.
As someone said in the article comments, if you liked that story, go watch:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4oB28ksiIo" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4oB28ksiIo</a><p><pre><code> Defcon 18 - Pwned By the owner
What happens when you steal a hackers computer zoz</code></pre>
Oh Make Magazine, please put your "close this slide show" button on the upper right instead of the upper left. I'm conditioned to look for X icons to close out of modal windows on the upper right not the upper left. Thaaaaaaanks.
great story! A friend of mine got her iPhone stolen, Find My iPhone didn't render anything for days so she gave up on it and got another one. This kind of technology should be standard on any new device
It's surprising that apparently almost no laptop thief takes the time to wipe the laptops.<p>That's the first thing I would do if I were in a business like that.