Back to My Mac Leads to Recovery of Stolen Mac

David Weintraub (apparently) - 04:05pm May 11, 2008 PST
via email

I saw this article in the New York Times, and realized that the owner
was fairly lucky. Her Macbook was able to connect to .Mac, she used
Back to My Mac when the thief was on her computer, and her friends
recognized the thief.

However, the fact she recovered her Mac via the built in webcam is
similar to a piece of anti-theft software I bought called Undercover
by Orbicule <http://www.orbicule.com/undercover/>.

Undercover ping's Orbicule whenever the Mac it is on gets onto the
Internet. If I call Orbicule, they'll listen for the stolen Mac's ping
and activate their software. Like the article, the Mac takes a picture
of the thief. It also takes pictures of the screen, so you can see
what the thief is getting into and maybe clues on the thief's identity
via emails and chat rooms. It also records the IP address of the Mac
in order to trace the location of the thief.

If that fails, the screen starts getting dimmer and dimmer in hopes
that the thief will take the Mac into repairs. It that fails, the Mac
will start screaming that it has been stolen, display a message on the
screen to that effect, and lock up the Mac to prevent further use. The
software starts at boot time, so the thief doesn't even have to log
in. Orbicule does recommend that you put on a Guest account, so the
thief has access to the computer, but not to your files.

I personally have no idea if Undercover works, and I hope I never have
to find out. Orbicule does has two stories on their website on how
their software helped recover stolen Macs
<http://www.orbicule.com/undercover/recovery.html>.

I have no connection with the company except I bought their software.
I can't even say I am a happy customer since I have been lucky enough
not to run into a situation where I had to use their software. But, I
thought other Mac owners might be interested.

BTW, the first web-cam thwarting a thief story I heard was about five
years ago. This guy was at work showing a friend how he can remotely
monitor his house via his webcam, and... Hey, is that someone in my
house stealing my stuff? Like the girl in the New York Times story,
the thief was recognized (a maintenance man he hired the week before),
and the culprit was quickly apprehended.

There is another "anti-theft" software called iAlertU
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/ialertu/> (Open Source) that acts
like a car alarm for your Mac. You click on the remote to activate the
software. It even makes that "car alarm activated" beep. If someone
moves your Macbook, it sounds an alarm and takes a picture of the
thief that's mailed to your email account. Clicking on the remote
deactivates the alarm. There's a demo on YouTube:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkAtRfA1UXc>

--
David Weintraub
qazwartgmail.com