A Story of How to Make Your Technology Harder to Steal
You may have heard of Sean Power, but if you have not, then maybe you should read this story:
A man named Sean Power (on Twitter, better known as @seanpower), went to visit New York City. At some point, while he was there, his brand new 17" MacBook Pro was stolen. Unfortunately, he was unable to retrieve it before he left. Fortunately, he installed an application called Prey on his laptop. With Prey, he was able track where his laptop was and who had it. With this information, he posted his dilemma on Twitter, many joined the cause of getting his laptop back. He had even called the cops, who apparently did not do anything. By the way, Sean also had his birth certificate, money, and quite a few other sensitive documents in the same bag as his stolen laptop. Eventually, a couple random people from Twitter went to the bar to confront recover the laptop for him and return it to him safe and sound.
Prey is this awesome software that, in the event your computer, Android phone, and iDevice (eventually, not yet), get stolen, you can track everything about the perpetrator, including IP address, webcam photo, location, and even screenshots of what is happening on your computer, while running incognito. This is some great software to prevent your technology from being lost after getting stolen. Everybody should have this software on their computer, and other compatible technology. The supported computer operating systems for this are Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu Linux. The best thing is that all this is free for up to five devices. They also have Pro packages for more intense tracking. Sean Power had the free package.
This should be a lesson to a would-be thief. With easily available tracking software, and a supportive army of Twitter followers, any thief's misdeed will not go unpunished. These thieves should either get real jobs or turn themselves in so they can go to jail and get ass-raped by someone who they will lovingly call "Bubba". To Sean Power: congrats on getting your laptop back. To the people who helped retrieve his laptop: You are proof that there are still good people in this world. (@girilinpurplesarong and @nickreese). To the thief himself: Fuck You.
As a public service, here is information about and images of the thief that I would encourage anybody with the ability to do so to make this person's life as hard as possible, at least for a little while (images below are from Sean Power and Prey and were hosted on imgur.com). Also, this gives you a chance to check out Prey in action, literally:
(It should also be noted that this information will never be taken off this site unless specifically requested by Sean Power himself.)
Name: Paolo Votano or "Max"
Email: lookingforpaolo@gmail.com
Owner, Place of Work or just the Crime Scene: Oficina Latina NYC, 24 Prince St, New York, NY 10012.
(Seems like this guy was the interior designer of this place, I will update if incorrect.)
IP Address: 208.125.10.71 (this is where he used the laptop, at the restaurant).
Original Links:
Author's Note: You may have noticed quite a bit of profanity in the above post, and if that bothers you, I'm sorry. However, I absolutely hate thieves. I feel no moral remorse for posting or encouraging people to make a thief's life a little harder than normal, should it be needed. I also feel that publishing the information to make it as easy as possible for prosecution to occur, should it ever take place (which I doubt it will at this point, being that Sean got his laptop back).
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