User gets stolen laptop back because of laptop's built-in web cam

[thewayne]

I should have posted this last week. Very cool story: owner has Mac laptop stolen when apartment is robbed. Owner works at an Apple store and is smarter than the average bear. Friend calls owner to express surprise that the owner got the laptop back as a chat program shows the owner is logged on. Owner uses a remote-control program, Back To My Mac, to activate the laptop's web cam and take a picture of the guy using said laptop. Picture is turned in to the police, laptop and all stolen possessions are recovered.

You just can't get a happier ending than that! Property recovered, perps do the perp walk and go to jail.

Original article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/nyregion/10laptop.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Slashdot thread: http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/11/0133232

And a Macosxhints.com has a post describing better ways of doing it, including rigging it so that it takes a picture every time someone logs on to your computer or opens the lid: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2006120918170984. That's what I'm thinking about doing as my main non-work computer is a MacBook Pro that has said built-in web cam, I want it to also FTP the picture up to my web site when it gets an internet connection.

Now, granted, this is specific to the Mac. But lots of laptops are coming equipped with web cams now, so I would expect there are similar background programs for the Windows and *nix environments.

Comments

[kylejcrb.livejournal.com]

Huh, I guess Apple laptops DO have their uses. :P