LaptopTheft
Latest
Study says more than 10,000 laptops go missing at US airports each week
As we've seen, laptops have a tendency of getting stolen from even the most unsuspecting places, but a new study has now found one not entirely surprising place where your laptop is particularly unsafe: the airport. According to the Ponemon Institute, more than 10,000 laptops are reported lost at the 36 largest airports in the US each week and, of those, 65 percent are not reclaimed. They also reported a further 2,000 laptops lost at medium-sized airports, with 69 percent of those not reclaimed. According to the institute, folks also aren't very confident that they'll ever see their laptop again once it goes missing, with 77 percent of the people surveyed saying they had "no hope" of ever recovering a laptop lost at the airport, and 16 percent saying they wouldn't even do anything to attempt to recover it. Of course, there's no shortage of suggestions out there for preventing your laptop from getting lost or stolen, and Network World's Richard Stiennon has a couple of good ones at the link below.[Via Network World]
Burglars swipe laptops, iPhones from Seattle Apple Store
Apparently not willing to wait for those rumored new ultraportable MacBooks, some burglars recently broke into the Apple Store at University Village in Seattle and made off with a number of laptops that had completed servicing, along with an "unknown stock" of refurbished iPhones. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, police arrived on the scene Monday morning and found a large hole in the ceiling of a technicians' room, with the entire office "in disarray." From the sound of it, it seems that the thieves may have been after more than just the laptops themselves, with at least one of the laptops reportedly "packed with personal information." No word on any leads just yet, but police say they might contact those who had their laptops stolen as part of the investigation.[Via Techmeme]
Thieves swipe dyslexic student's specialized laptop
While laptop thefts are anything but a rare occurrence, some certainly generate more attention than others. Now it seems that the international laptop crime ring has struck a new low, with the Middletown Guardian reporting that thieves recently swiped a laptop that had been specially designed to aid Hopwood Hall College student Gemma Williams with her dyslexia, nabbing her cellphone and MP3 player as well. If that weren't enough, the laptop also apparently had much of her college work stored on it, some of which she now may have to do all over again. While there doesn't appear to be any leads on the laptop just yet, it's apparently believed to be the work of individuals from outside the college, and not by other students. [Thanks, Blackcaesar]
Malaysian laptop thieves using mystery gadget to pick which cars to break into
Malaysia's New Straits Times reports that tech-savvy thieves in the district of Petaling Jaya have been using a "special gadget" in order to identify which parked cars have laptops hidden inside of them, with 255 laptops stolen from cars there so far this year. The police, who have not been able to get their hands on one of these mysterious devices, are stumped and are recommending that people carry their laptops with them rather than leave them in their cars. There have been a few (almost certainly) apocryphal tales of thieves using WiFi and Bluetooth to detect the presence of a laptop in a car or home, anyone have any idea what these guys are using? Are they shopping at the Engadget store, or are the police there just trying to come up with a fancy rationale for a crime wave?[Thanks, Joel]
