Stolen laptop recovered with Back To My Mac

Here's a little story for you: 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!

[Via TUAW]

[Raheem @ May 11th 2008 10:55AM]

Haha, that's awesome. How does this work exactly?

[Pingmeister @ May 11th 2008 11:03AM]

I'm assuming it allows you to snapshot from the camera remotely and upload it somewhere.

If so, great feature.

Great story, too. I will be sharing this with others. Perhaps my wife's Macbook is about to get a .mac subscription.

[Tom Oliveri @ May 11th 2008 11:04AM]

the computer automatically signs into .mac and if you go to the website you get a web page that allows you to controll the computer and access the files

[jcwestbrook @ May 11th 2008 12:41PM]

LogMeIn.com does this for free - and works on PC and MAC. I use it at work to fix/troubleshoot/update remote computers (about 24 PCs at four locations). It works great.

[stefan @ May 11th 2008 1:23PM]

uh.... 2 questions:

- She works at an Apple store, realizes how to use a remote desktop but she didn't set a password? (unless they stole the computer in a running state and didn't reboot it since)
- why didn't they reformat the computer immediately?

[Twitchy @ May 11th 2008 7:29PM]

I guess the bible should now be edited to read "The geek(s) shall inherit the Earth."

[nikster @ May 11th 2008 11:09PM]

@stefan: Why didn't they wipe the machine? They burgled their "friend's" apartment. These are not rocket scientists. They even managed to get caught by PhotoBooth which displays a 3 second countdown before snapping a pic. So I would go further and assume they are dumb as bricks.

[Mike10010100 @ May 11th 2008 10:58AM]

My God! That's brilliant!

Will she marry me?

[Jeebus @ May 11th 2008 11:05AM]

Most likely not.

[Matt @ May 11th 2008 10:59AM]

$99.95+ yearly subscription to .mac!?

*cough* VNC *cough*

[Tom Oliveri @ May 11th 2008 11:03AM]

they wouldnt have known the IP address you fool .mac is the only way this is possible

[dzhiurgis @ May 11th 2008 11:03AM]

*nerd* farth *nerd*

[Chrisvanren @ May 11th 2008 11:06AM]

you don't need .Mac
All you need to do is know your user name & password. If you have screen sharing turned on you just have to send a request to the computer & bam! your in. If the thieves were using the computer @ the time, they were probably like WTF! Anyways yeah this is just OS X' built in *cough* VNC *cough*

[Gav @ May 11th 2008 11:06AM]

.Mac isn't the only way this would have been possible, there are other solutions. However .Mac is probably the most elegant.

[Matt @ May 11th 2008 11:31AM]

@Chrisvanren... (quote from the Back to My Mac page)
"*Requirements for using Back to My Mac
* A .Mac subscription (Basic Membership or .Mac Family Pack required)

http://www.apple.com/dotmac/backtomymac.html


@Tom Oliveri...
Nope, perfectly possible. If I were to set up VNC on a laptop I would set it up with a domain and dyndns (I always use afraid.org) so I wouldn't have to remember an IP. When the laptop was connected to a different network the dyndns client would update the IP associated with the domain and thus I would be able to access the laptop via VNC through the domain.


God, just because I said something remotely intelligent. You can't honestly say you would pay that subscription?

[Beastage @ May 11th 2008 11:47AM]

They are mac fans, intelligent? :P

dyndns, or easier logmein, free of charge , you login to their website and voila.

[Joey Villarreal @ May 11th 2008 11:48AM]

The .Mac method is probably the easiest. Not everyone know how to set this stuff up and to the regular consumer, not this girl in particular, but lots of people, this is the easiest way. you just log into .Mac with your computer and it's set up.

[Rob @ May 11th 2008 11:52AM]

For what it's worth; nobody I know has ever bought .mac for more than $69. It's widely available in retail channels for $69. No one should buy it directly from apple. Same goes for applecare.

And for $69 it's well worth it IMO. It does a lot more than just what's being discussed here.

[SOOPERGOOMAN @ May 11th 2008 12:46PM]

@ MATT, I use vnc and had to do just what you said when someone stole a lappy from me a bunch of years ago. But I trumped you and logged in with my PSP(tight vnc). Then started my cam and got the perp the same way as This Uber Nerdy Girl. Caught red handed and with an ugly mug shot to boot. .Mac, great idea. VNC/tightvnc great app also. You could always just put your own spyware key logger ip and domain tracking software on your pc. but I doubt many laypeeps out there would know how to do it the right way. Kudos for the average person taking a virtual Bite out of Crime.

[Mike Cerm @ May 11th 2008 1:09PM]

Hamachi + VNC = Free, does this exact same thing and more, cross-platform

[TimeyWimeyStuff @ May 11th 2008 1:48PM]

@ Mike Cerm
Website Hosting
IMAP Mail
10Gb Storage
Web Gallery
Sync (Contacts, Calenders backup)
Seamless Integration with iLife + iWork products


Does Hamachi + VNC do all this as well?

[Bootes @ Jun 3rd 2008 3:50AM]

@Matt

Mac OS X has a built in VNC server than can be used without .Mac.

[Christopher Wilson @ May 11th 2008 2:13PM]

@matt: that assumes that they either didnt have a router or that if vnc supports upnp, they have it enabled in their router.

[Jesse S @ May 11th 2008 4:06PM]

@Stuff:

That doesn't matter. We aren't talking about that stuff.

Nice failure at logic.

[CraigJ @ May 11th 2008 4:31PM]

@Jesse: There were complaints about the price of .Mac and comparing it to VNC. .Mac is more than just remote access to your Mac, thus comparing .Mac to VNC is not accurate, thus his comment is valid. Way to fail reading comprehension.

There are free or low cost ways to to what .Mac does, but for a lot of people $70 a year is perfectly reasonable and .Mac makes it really easy.

[Matt @ May 11th 2008 11:23PM]

@Stuff
Google alone does a lot of that for free:
Website Hosting (googlepages)
IMAP Mail (GMail)
Web Gallery (Picasa)

G-Drive never materialized though, right?
I suppose you could run your own server, maybe even use Hamachi. But you need to install that, and AFAIK you can't without admin privileges. And they charge you $40 if you want to run it as a service or have a network with more than 16 clients.
Anyone know of something like Hamachi, also with a free option, that I can run from a USB drive anywhere? Port forwarding like SSH would be fine, but with UDP encapsulation and NAT traversal.

[Randy @ May 11th 2008 11:02AM]

Not only was she tech savvy, but I bet she was likely smoking hot too.
No woman gets cops to do their job fast, regardless of the evidence presented, unless she is smoking hot.

Raheen, she likely had some form of security/cam software installed that uploaded her webcam to a website.... maybe she was a stripper lol

[Dan @ May 18th 2008 12:33PM]

Dugg up for the cop joke

[Tom Oliveri @ May 11th 2008 11:05AM]

hate to be the 'this was posted elsewhere x days ago' guy but...
this was posted on giz like a week ago

[Daniel D. @ May 11th 2008 11:27AM]

I saw this on Digg early yesterday morning.

[andres @ May 11th 2008 12:26PM]

if you hate to do it, then dont

[tydei8 @ May 11th 2008 12:30PM]

Who cares? Not everybody reads 14 different gadget sites. Also, i would hardly say that this is earth breaking news . Good for giz, or whatever it was you said.

[hp540 @ May 11th 2008 5:35PM]

good for you douchebag

[Tone @ May 11th 2008 8:24PM]

shut yer fackin face.

[Chromira @ May 12th 2008 1:24PM]

wrong. it didn't even happen until last tuesday.

[Dook_In_The_Urinal @ May 12th 2008 1:07PM]

You were beat up a lot in school, weren't you?
Who fuckin CARES where/when you saw this!!?

[Ed @ May 11th 2008 11:05AM]

no one has questioned if this is real or a fake?

[Chrisvanren @ May 11th 2008 11:08AM]

how would this be fake?

[Chris Macdonald @ May 11th 2008 11:29AM]

I questioned it. And I came to the conclusion that it's real.

[DT @ May 11th 2008 11:38AM]

The NYTimes did an article on it. So I'll wager it's real. They had pics of the perps.

[CraigJ @ May 11th 2008 11:52AM]

I'm sure the cops did initially.

[Mike @ May 11th 2008 12:32PM]

NYT Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/nyregion/10laptop.html

[derX @ May 11th 2008 5:28PM]

Mike, thanks for the link. BTW, is it just me or wow, that NYT article is so poorly written? Had it not been on the official site, I never would've believed it was NYT writing.

----------

See, this goes to show that webcams are quite useful. Most people just say webcams are only good for pr0n exchange, those goes to show that hey, they're good for security, too.

Moral of the story: DON'T STEAL A LAPTOP FROM A COMPUTER SAVVY PERSON....dumbasses.

[MrGam3r @ May 11th 2008 11:09AM]

pwned.

[helloUser @ May 11th 2008 11:19AM]

lawl!

[fanman @ May 11th 2008 12:12PM]

The correct term is "HEADSHOT!"

[Tarvus Domicus @ May 11th 2008 1:36PM]

"Pwned" is not a word. Wake the fuck up.

[Steve Jones @ May 11th 2008 1:50PM]

It's a better word than your name, "Tarvus".

[Seth Porter @ May 11th 2008 6:28PM]

Ah man steve, i laughed so hard when I saw your comment. Props to you.

[Morgan @ May 11th 2008 11:01PM]

Tarvus, coming to Engadget to say "pwned" isn't a word is like walking into a bar and saying bikers suck donkey balls. You just don't do that kind of thing, man.