As summertime travel approaches, now is a great time for me to remind you to mind your personal electronic portables. According to Gartner, one in six people now have access to a high-tech mobile device, and odds are high that someone has their eyes on your stuff.
A creepy laptop thief hoping to snag some free electronic swag, got way more than he bargained for recently.
The Associated Press reported this week that an Oakland, California man had his apartment burglarized and his MacBook stolen. The good news is that he got it back thanks to an online, viral, one-man crusade. Local police were swamped and unable to assist, so Joshua Kaufman took matters into his own hands. After posting photos of the stranger on Twitter and creating a blog titled “This Guy Has My MacBook”, sweet justice got served.
Kaufman stated: “People who followed me on Twitter retweeted it. It got picked up by social media and the press. It went super viral,” he said. On the same day that he posted his website on Twitter, police came calling.
WVEC in Norfolk, Virginia published a report on their site:
“Kaufman’s case is the latest example of people, not police, using technological tools to help find their own stolen property such as cars, cell phones and digital cameras. Kaufman had just moved to a new apartment in Oakland when a burglar broke in, taking the laptop, a bag, an electronic book reader, and a bottle of gin on March 21. He activated theft-tracking software he had installed, which began sending photos taken by the computer’s built-in camera of the unauthorized user three days later.”
Luckily for Kaufman, the security software he had installed but never tested, began sending grainy photos from the device’s camera to his inbox. The victim observed the thief, posted his photo on the web and voila! After the photos went viral and caught the attention of the media, law enforcement went to work on the case and nabbed the thief.
Many devices equipped with mobile web and geo-tagging technology are literally equipped to “phone home” when properly outfitted with security software.
One of my kids recently went on vacation and left an iPhone in the hotel room upon check-out. A land line call to the hotel got the usual response: “We’re sorry, but your room has been cleaned and no iPhone was turned in.” From this point the conversation went something like this: “Really? My phone’s tracking locator says the phone is still there, I can see it online!”
Three minutes later, the hotel called back (they never call back) with the good news that the phone had just been located. How do you put a value on that sort of electronic sleuthing capability? ET phoned home alright. Truth is sometimes stranger than science-fiction.
