Revenge of the geek: MacBook thief made a fool of on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c8W1NDYf38
Mar 24, 2011 5:09pm
Never steal a laptop from a geek. That's the
lesson for gadget-stealing thieves after Mark Bao made mince meat
out of the reputation of a man who nicked his MacBook Air one and a
half months ago.
The 18-year-old Boston, Massachusetts university student at the
weekend posted on the web a video of the thief dancing to a rap
song that was recorded with the stolen laptop's webcam.
The footage was found using special backup software he had
installed on the laptop that would upload any new files to a
computer server which only he had access to. "In essence I was able
to get into their files," Bao said, speaking with Fairfax.
So when the thief decided to record some fancy new dance moves
to music in front of his newly stolen laptop's web camera, the
video file was uploaded to the server, which Bao said he only
discovered at the weekend when looking for a file that had been
backed up.
After seeing it, he decided to upload it to YouTube and it has
since gone viral, attracting more than 500,000 views. Since then,
Bao said the thief had contacted him telling him that he had
returned the laptop to Bao's university campus police.
Through Facebook message, the thief also demanded that the video
be taken down, Bao said.
"It basically [said] that he was really sorry [and] he [had]
returned the laptop to the police station," Bao said.
"He wanted me to remove the video because it might impact his
future."
Charges were yet to be laid, Bao said. Comment was sought from
Bao's university's police station. At the time of writing a comment
was not available due to time zone differences.
Asked if Bao would remove the video now that the laptop had been
recovered, he said it "depends".
"'I'm still deliberating if I do want to [take the video down].
The thing was he asked me to take it down because he was really
sorry about what happened," Bao said.
"The bottom line is there's two things: one thing is that he
stole the laptop, which, you know, was kind of a bad thing. The
second part is his apology letter wasn't even really spelt
correctly. There were a bunch of grammar errors and I don't think
it was really serious. If he was really serious in his response I
would be a pretty forgiving guy. But it didn't seem like he
was."
"I might take it down in the next few days, next two weeeks. But
I'm still out on the jury on that issue."
Since Bao had purchased a new laptop after the old one had been
stolen, he was going to sell the older one and donate the proceeds
to support the relief efforts in Japan.
Bao's vigilante detective work follows a string of similar
cases.
In August 2009, a Sydney-based IT support firm discovered who
stole one of its laptops after logging in via remote desktop
software and waiting for the user to log on to Facebook.
In June 2009, an Apple tool called "Find My iPhone" helped a US
iPhone user track down his stolen phone without needing to place a
single call to police. In Just last year, Melbourne-based Angela
Devery had her phone pinched by a taxi driver after leaving it in a
cab and tracked it down using the same method.
In April of 2008, a US woman checking her video surveillance
system from the internet while she was at work caught four people
robbing her house. She was able to watch while 18 officers
surrounded the house and nabbed the looters.
In the same year in New York, US police arrested two men and
recovered almost $6000 worth of stolen computers and electronic
devices after the owner of one of the stolen laptops was able to
connect remotely to her Apple MacBook and photograph the thief.
Similarly, when an engineering student's house was burgled in
Philadelphia in March 2008, he published the clues on a discussion
website and an army of volunteer sleuths were able to track down
the thieves and seize back two of the three stolen goods.
