Laptop guarding cat iz suspicious. Photo by gillicious.

Here's a story: Man visits classroom. Man steals instructor's MacBook Pro computer, becomes Thief. Instructor is a Skype user, has Skype set to automatically answer all incoming calls and turn on built-in webcam. Instructor calls computer. Thief appears on screen, is identified and eventually arrested.

It sounds a bit implausible (and stupid on the thief's part), but it's a true story. It happened earlier this year at Utah Valley University. Michael Birkeland, an actor who has appeared in several low budget films, had visited an art instructor's class in April, and after class the laptop disappeared. Fortunately for the instructor, he had Skype installed and running, and when he called his computer he saw Birkeland on his screen. Birkeland covered the camera and refused to give the laptop back directly, and eventually was arrested.

It's a nice Skype story (thanks to Skype Journal for spotting it), but it makes me wonder what a person without Skype set to automatically answer (or facing a smarter criminal) could do if his or her laptop was stolen. It seems that most laptop thieves are not very technically savvy--they just grab a laptop when they have the chance and hope to use it themselves or sell it quickly without thinking to wipe the OS. For these criminals, tracking software might provide a way to catch them--if it's installed and the thief tries to go online, it will record his or her IP address and send it to the victim. With the help of the police and a subpoena to the ISP the IP address belongs to, the ISP can provide the address where the laptop is and it can be seized and recovered. Check out these Slashdot discussions on stolen laptops and laptop tracking software, particularly the last one on Adeona, an open source tracking software with a Mac version that uses the Mac's camera to take photos.

It really sucks to have your laptop stolen--it happened to me a few years ago when my 5-year-old, completely-useless-to-anyone-but-me laptop was stolen from my apartment. The battery didn't work anymore and the chassis was held together with duct tape. The thief didn't take the AC adapter, so he or she probably never got it working and just tossed it, along with countless photos, documents and songs I didn't have backups for. So moral of the story: Have a full backup, and try out a tracking software / service (if you don't want to try your luck only with Skype set to auto-answer)--you might just get lucky and get that laptop back.