Revenge of the geek: MacBook thief made a fool of on YouTube
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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.
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I hope the fella doesn't take down the video.
It's clear the thief was only sorry for getting caught.
He should be worrying about a real conviction for theft and a criminal record instead of a self-humiliating video on Youtube.
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if they able to do that to stolen laptops,what more non stolen laptop O.O
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.....his dancing sucks! Throw him to prison