11 ms·

Ask HN: He stole my laptop, and sent me this, what would you do?

• angrycoder 16y ago
  I would offer him a hundred bucks for the name and location of the person he bought the laptop from.
  • greenlblue 16y ago
    Plus take his offer on backing up the data. I'm assuming it's valuable if you backed it up.
    • ars 16y ago
      Seconded. With your data, and the name of the real thief, you have a chance at both getting your data back, and getting a judgment against the thief for the value of the laptop. It's not a guaranteed chance of course, but I would go for it.
• spyne-02139 16y ago
  post the email headers here
  • mthoms 16y ago
    Now, now. Let's not go vigilante. There's a site dedicated to that stuff if the OP is interested. It's called Reddit. Edit: By the downvotes, I see that apparently HN is not above internet mob justice. My mistake, carry on.
    • deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    • wizard_2 16y ago
      I can tell you first hand the police don't have the manpower or knowhow to track people on the internet. They're good but they need help.
    • dwwoelfel 16y ago
      It's only vigilante justice if someone illegally punishes the criminal. Helping the police locate a suspect is called "being a good citizen".
  • detst 16y ago
    Or 4chan. It seems those people love challenges like this.
  • kabuks 16y ago
    Delivered-To: shereef@gmail.com Received: by 10.227.137.69 with SMTP id v5cs104210wbt; Sat, 18 Sep 2010 18:42:06 -0700 (PDT) Return-Path: <101badkarma@gmail.com> Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of 101badkarma@gmail.com designates 10.142.223.11 as permitted sender) client-ip=10.142.223.11; Authentication-Results: mr.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of 101badkarma@gmail.com designates 10.142.223.11 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=101badkarma@gmail.com; dkim=pass header.i=101badkarma@gmail.com Received: from mr.google.com ([10.142.223.11]) by 10.142.223.11 with SMTP id v11mr6012112wfg.29.1284860525531 (num_hops = 1); Sat, 18 Sep 2010 18:42:05 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:received:date:message-id :subject:from:to:content-type; bh=En3bZiL4+B5vTtybnZXiAYgxVH8KE7aSzQ8trXFJhfw=; b=b0mf+OtiHbF5VdsI9H27MN7Tmwz6NLqkFU/1fPmYNqbBNOR7kkXv0OrJsD3zIbZ4Js i6eaN1cBbq5DEDjxxJIqhwPBaJw6qUAJkQvFXeg9F/afpS6e3/jyfBbthgcXCEKxFfg+ vwaTfaiQeFFyXHTI1CG5XZLCICl2L7LXVH/tA= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type; b=aZps057Ba5cXMeIEOROw7bo/ZxucfJyDaLxN0F3nepTGQYtaUFtpA+H1irq3s5CfeE A0z0zWtaKFAVe3K6VJibIRleRkCaIy8WDKkoWMUTze1xQcSWphWiiDK8yixD989a8LRW unv0IRELrI4cauF32fgTvT4wW3Sa+leUuv20I= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.142.223.11 with SMTP id v11mr6012112wfg.29.1284860525521; Sat, 18 Sep 2010 18:42:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.142.135.13 with HTTP; Sat, 18 Sep 2010 18:42:05 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2010 18:42:05 -0700 Message-ID: <AANLkTi=ek0sq9johN8AYFjQQXpg0kvGtE5ZXn0MZ=zU0@mail.gmail.com> Subject: Stolen Laptop From: karma bad <101badkarma@gmail.com> To: shereef@gmail.com Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=000e0cd17e7635ad30049092e752 --000e0cd17e7635ad30049092e752 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
• johnglasgow 16y ago
  I'd offer to buy the computer back for a little more than he paid. Sounds like he got a really good deal, so it couldn't cost you too much.
  • basicxman 16y ago
    Yes, but then the resellee is down a laptop, and wouldn't get another good deal like that. Unlikely that he would accept said offer.
  • piramida 16y ago
    And you will trust the person who buys stolen laptops to call the amount of money (s)he wants for it? I bet it will be very close to retail price :)
• CaptainMorgan 16y ago
  He got your email because he has your laptop - same for the backup software. Depending on how valuable your information is consider a sizable monetary amount to get the name of the person he bought it from or just offer more than the laptop's value to get it back and end it. Consider reporting to the police what you're doing... if a physical/in-person exchange of the information occurs and he didn't take you up on your offer, the police might be able to legally influence the buyer into giving up the details of the seller/thief since the buyer committed a crime too. Good luck.
  • cubicle67 16y ago
    To expand; System Preferences > Time Machine will tell you time of last backup, date of oldest backup, etc. You email address will be in the Account settings of Mail (Preferences > Accounts) Also available are - your home address and phone number (in Address Book, he'll already know your name from Mail), saved passwords in FireFox (stored as plain text), iTunes account if you've set it to save your password, and websites where you've set 'Remember Me' (GMail and the like) etc Luckily for you this person seems to have some degree of respect for your data, and hopefully your privacy. If you're not happy with their access to this, it seems they have more leverage over you than you do over them. Protip: In OSX you can set it to require login password after a certain timeout, eg 1 hour. It's under System Preferences > Security > General
    • kabuks 16y ago
      That's what's puzzling to me. I have it set require login everytime it sleeps. Somehow this guy got passed this
• gkoberger 16y ago
  When I was younger, my mother had her wallet stolen. The person who stole it sent it back to her (including her ID, credit cards, etc), minus the hundred or so dollars in cash. While I would have been furious, she was completely okay with it. She calmly told me, "The person who stole it clearly needed it more than me." Now, this isn't to say that stealing is okay. It's certainly not, and I'd be pissed. However, this person knows what he did was wrong. He really seems to hate what he had to do to get the computer. But he clearly needs it. Maybe he wants it so he can get a job, or wants it so his kid can succeed. Try appealing to this side of him. Find out why he needs it. I doubt it's so he can watch YouTube videos, based on his email. You can buy a cheap desktop (or even laptop) for a few hundred dollars. Offer to trade a crappy computer for yours. (I doubt he wants you to buy it back; he seems to care more about the computer than money.) The person almost definitely doesn't need a computer as good as what you had stolen from you, and he's already feeling really guilty about it. And, if he agrees, you can try to find out who actually stole it and tell the police. Sure, it's unfair you'd have to drop a few hundred dollars- but consider it a donation. (Depending on the circumstances, you might even be able to figure out a way to legally donate it to him through some sort of organization- which would be tax deductible.) After all, giving him a computer could change his life. Think about how much your life has improved by merely owning a computer; something most people on HN take for granted. You could turn a bad situation into one you're really proud of.
  • lionhearted 16y ago
    > "The person who stole it clearly needed it more than me." Counterpoints that will be unpopular, but need to be said anyways: 1. "Needing" is no excuse for stealing, and that demeans all the people who BUST THEIR ASS to get out of poverty. If the thief is not working 12 hours per day and living on bare necessities, they have no excuse, and being even mildly sympathetic to their plight is bad for everyone, most especially poor people. NEVER pardon stealing, ESPECIALLY from another individual. Condoning ANY stealing is terrible - thieves are far more likely to steal near them, which will be from other needy people, thus making their poverty worse. Never condone a criminal's behavior, especially and above all street crime. > Find out why he needs it. I doubt it's so he can watch YouTube videos, based on his email. You can buy a cheap desktop (or even laptop) for a few hundred dollars. Offer to trade a crappy computer for yours. 2. This could very well be another scam or attempt to rob MORE (the person has already demonstrated that they have no integrity and will steal from people), and you're encouraging the original poster to walk into the lion's den and potentially risk getting robbed or ripped off even more. This is crazy, reckless, and dangerous for the OP. > After all, giving him a computer could change his life. It's a THIEF, dude. You can get a used computer for a few hundred dollars, that's like a week worth of saving at the most low quality minimum wage job. Work 80 hours for a couple weeks and use the money to buy a computer. Some of us do stuff like that to get out of povery. God, this smug "crime is okay because they need it" crap among upper middle class people is awful, it makes me sick to my stomach. NO, committing street crime is NOT okay, EVER. There's ALWAYS another way.
• aniket_ray 16y ago
  Report to police. Do not let him create a secondary market for stolen laptops. It would become an economic incentive for the stealers to steal more laptops. Research has shown that tolerance of public crime gradually leads to an increase in major crime. (Read about this in one of the pop economic books, not sure which). Do you want to keep your city a safer place to live?
  • mthoms 16y ago
    Not sure if this is what you're referring to but it's interesting and relevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
    • aniket_ray 16y ago
      Yes, that's the one. Thanks a lot. I figured from that page that I read about it in either the Tipping Point or in the Freakonomics. I hadn't read about its criticisms before, interesting read.
• hardy263 16y ago
  If something like this happened to me, I'd take it as an opportunity to upgrade my laptop to something better. If you consider it from his point of view, he just dropped a couple hundred for hardware that was stolen. If he just gave it back, then he'd have lost all his money for nothing. So he's willing to pay a bit extra to get a 160GB hard drive to duplicate the important data and give it back, because hardware is replaceable, but data isn't. It'll make him sleep easier at night, knowing he didn't completely do the wrong thing.
• jrockway 16y ago
  Incidentally, this is why I encrypt my disks. I really wouldn't want someone who traffics in stolen property to have access to all my personal information.
• patrickgzill 16y ago
  You may well be able to trace it at least part of the way (or all if he was dumb enough to use the laptop at his work or home Internet) by looking at the full email headers, which usually retain the hostnames and/or IP addresses of each system it went through along the way. Including the origin IP of the laptop, indicating where it was at the time the email was sent. Who runs your email services? If it is your local ISP, they may be able to get the IP address from the logfiles, though larger companies will probably brush you off.
• leif 16y ago
  Assuming you know something about digital snooping, and he doesn't know anything about privacy, you can figure out a lot about him, possibly even remotely access your computer and (if it has a webcam) take a picture and report everything to the police. You should talk to the police first (in fact, you should've the moment it was stolen), but explain that you know a lot about computers (most police don't have much in the way of computer security experts on staff, and they wouldn't waste their time on petty theft) and will be trying to find out more about this guy. They'll probably be glad for anything you might find, so long as it's well-documented and provable, and this kind of investigation should be admissible in court. There are reported cases of theft victims snapping pictures of thieves with their webcams and actually getting results. If you feel bad for the guy, and assuming you find him, you can ask the cops to cut him a break if he gives evidence about the thief he bought it from. They will probably offer him this deal too, but since he already reached out to you, he will trust you more when it comes from you.
• anonuhhyeahmm 16y ago
  he's a criminal. he bought a stolen laptop (who buys a used computer without turning it on and exploring it a little to make sure things work? remember, he's smart enough to get your email, etc. he knows about computers and buying used computers). contact your local police and explain the situation to them. ask if an officer can accompany you when you meet this person to receive your data (or whatever they think you should do...). you could then set up to meet in a public space and just have the police officer sitting somewhere nearby and then he'll walk over as your exchange takes place. i'm sure they can help with planning it all out and according to their policies... if they turn you down for some bizarre reason (grumpy/lazy officer or receptionist maybe?) make sure to press the issue. make sure to walk in rather than just call. bring a copy of the email with you. have a good one
  • keefe 16y ago
    if he's a competent criminal he'd offer to mail the hard drive not meet..........
• danilocampos 16y ago
  Somewhat off-topic, but... This is a good time to point out the value of insurance. For a few bucks a month, I pay my insurance company to cover my computers. For anything – theft, me being an idiot, accidental damage, whatever, they'll pay to replace it. Whoever writes your homeowner's/renter's policy (you have a renter's policy, don't you?) can set you up with coverage for your laptop. A few bucks a month to replace what may be the most important, valuable tool you own is a no brainer.
  • dawsdesign 16y ago
    That I do too.
  • webwright 16y ago
    This is a good time to point out the non-value of insurance. Insurance companies make money on selling you insurance most of the time. That means, statistically speaking, you will give them more money than they give you. Take the few bucks per month and put it in a savings account.
    • danilocampos 16y ago
      I wish I could agree with you. I love to avoid bullshit money traps perpetrated by large companies preying on the fears of consumers, but this is legitimately a good deal. To insure both my own and my girlfriend's laptops (both mid-range MacBook Pros), it costs me about $9 a month. We're talking about $3,200 (USD) in coverage. It would take about 29 years to save up that much (at $9 a month). In the event that my laptop is destroyed/stolen/dropped in a bathtub tomorrow, that savings of $160 since last year isn't going to do me much good. Speaking from experience, the ability to walk into my agent's office, report the loss, and have a check in my mailbox before the end of the week is a truly powerful thing. edit: And, it's worth pointing out, I'm pretty sure that in the space of 29 years, something terrible is going to happen to my laptop. In which case, I've come out ahead.
      • nostrademons 16y ago
        I figured the same thing when I got the extended warranty on my first laptop. Laptops are fragile, they die often, it was only like $100 (that's your $9/month for a year...), and if the laptop was broken before the extended warranty ran out (5 years, I think), I'd get a new one, based on current laptop price/performance. I thought this was a great deal, since I thought it quite likely that my first one would die before 5 years and then I could get a much better one at no additional cost. Problem was, when the laptop finally died about 3.5 years later, they made up some bullshit excuse about there being a "liquid spill" on it and refused to honor the extended warranty. (Yeah, Circuit City, no wonder they're out of business...) Anyway, I found the whole experience of trying to convince the service company that yes, my laptop needed servicing so distasteful that I didn't bother with any sort of insurance or extended warranty for my second. And wouldn't you know, it lasted for 5 years, never needed servicing, and can still boot up and run today, though the network's a bit flaky and the battery is basically dead. My point (and presumably webwright's, though I disagree with him in another thread) is that the insurance company has to be making money off this policy somehow - they've got lots of actuaries calculating odds to make sure they come out ahead at the rates they charge. If you think "of course my laptop is going to die within 29 years - I'm bound to come out ahead", I'd suggest reading over your policy very carefully. My guess is that they have some very strict conditions on how it dies, and there's a good chance they won't cover it for many mundane run-of-the-mill failures. Buy insurance because you can't afford to cover the loss otherwise, not because you expect to make a profit on it.
• protomyth 16y ago
  If it is an Apple laptop (time machine) then report the stolen serial number to the police and Apple. If he brings it in to be serviced then there is a chance of recovery. Nothing good comes from the act of stealing. I could get see with food and basic survival items (much less so in the US where organizations will give people these things), but not with a luxury good like a laptop.
• thought_alarm 16y ago
  This is a good reminder for people to set an Open Firmware/EFI Password on their hardware. If someone has physical access to your hardware then they can get access to all of your unencrypted data if they really want it. However, a firmware password would probably prevent someone from emailing you from your own account a couple of hours after they've stolen your laptop. When the firmware password is set, your laptop will prompt for the password before booting from DVD, USB, or Firewire drive. It will also prevent booting into Single-User mode. You can set up a firmware password by using the Open Firmware Password.app in your Utilities folder.
  • kijinbear 16y ago
    Does the firmware password also cause the hard drive contents to be encrypted? I don't think so. Anybody with a screwdriver can take the hard drive out, pop it into another box, and bypass whatever password you've set up. After all, why would a thief care about voiding the warranty?
    • thought_alarm 16y ago
      As much as I hate to quote my own comment: "If someone has physical access to your hardware then they can get access to all of your unencrypted data if they really want it. However, a firmware password would probably prevent someone from emailing you from your own account a couple of hours after they've stolen your laptop."
      • borism 16y ago
        as much as I hate to quote previous comment: "Anybody with a screwdriver can take the hard drive out, pop it into another box, and bypass whatever (BIOS/EFI) password you've set up." if you really don't wan't somebody to have access to your system you need full disk encryption.
• johnnyg 16y ago
  What you lost when your laptop was stolen: 1. Privacy 2. Data 3. Hardware I'd say those are in ranked order. 1. Your privacy in relation to the data on that laptop is gone. 2. He's offering to return the core data back to you. If your laptop is anything like mine, the value is in the data. You have a means to get it back, so get it back! 3. The hardware is fairly unimportant comparatively. With that out of the way, the returning of your data to you will create an interesting dance between you and the purchaser of stolen goods. If you just want the data clean and then to move on with your life, just do as the thief says, get your data and go buy another laptop. If you want to turn up the volume on this, start thinking up methods of doing the data exchange that'll expose the thief's location. Here are my ideas, none the less: 1. The thief knows what time machine is and got your email out of your data. Based on this it seems a self installing lowjack.dmg on a keychain drive is unlikely to work. If discovered, you just lost all that data. You lose the moral high ground just by trying it. 2. Were you pulling any kind of network/voip log files into time machine regularly? Perhaps on start up your time machine would have pulled identifying information from the laptops new location. 3. Reddit style email header trace. That's really taking the gloves off. If/when you are able to get the data, I have a suggestion and a story... In college my girlfriend (now my wife) was a DC intern and had her cell phone stolen. Its been a while since it happened and some of this is likely embellished from re-telling. Back to the story...her reaction to this was to wait a day, call the cell phone and ask the person who answered if she could speak to the lady of the house. She got handed over to the thief's mother, who agreed to meet her in the park to return the cell phone. Telling no one about this, the next day she solo's into the park, gets her cell phone, has a heart to heart with the thief about stealing and returns to work. This path of actions is, of course, insane (and awesome). The moral of the story though is IF you get the contact information, don't both with the thief because they've already said strait up that "Berating me for my actions is useless." Instead, give that thief something to answer for next Thanksgiving. Shame is often felt by proximity, so call in the mommy air strike. Good luck. Be safe.
• danbmil99 16y ago
  act all nice about it, and figure out some way to find out who he is, then fuck up his life.
• lionhearted 16y ago
  Note: I am not in law enforcement, just going by my instinct here. Observe: > I am offering to back up to 160 gigs to another hard drive. There is only about 240 gigs worth of information. I see that you have backed up most everything using time machine. If there is anything smaller like 4, 8, or 10 gigs worth I can do that faster to DVDs or flash drives. I would have to buy another hard drive to get you the 160 gigs. Which i would if you need the info. This combined with the supposed very quick rapid sale of the laptop has me suspicious - I would bet it's the original thief emailing you. Since he mentions time machine right away and found your email quickly - this is a computer sophisticated person, who possibly has done this before. "Berating me for my actions is useless" is also well written English. This is not a run of the mill stupid person. You're likely dealing with someone intelligent with very bad intentions. I'd be scared now if running into another scam - I'm guessing, again I'm not in LE, but I'm guessing that the offer to buy a hard drive and back up for you will ask of you cash to be sent to a Paypal or Western Union or something, that you'll never see again, nor your data. > what would you do? First, pause and reflect. You don't need to hurry, it's more important you don't do anything stupid. Second, get law enforcement involved. Now, I had my car window smashed once and had a bunch of stuff grabbed when I lived in a bad neighborhood, they took my stereo and cigarettes. Police are good people, but they tend to realize there's not much they can do about something like this, and they have limited resources. So, think about how to approach the police to get them interested - maybe talk to a computer crimes person online who would be interested in helping out, and get all the information you can. If this is a scam or a common thing (again, my intuition says so), then the police will be a lot more interested. Maybe you can put a sting together and get your computer back and/or put this bastard in jail. I think your next two steps should be contacting people online who deal with this sort of thing, and contacting local law enforcement. Maybe the FBI would be interested actually, if you find the right agent and ask if this looks like a pattern/regular thing. Police love to catch and lock up repeat offenders, especially sophisticated ones. Contact a lot of people - people tend to be sympathetic to when crime happens, and hate criminals. Whatever you do, don't contact this person on your own before consulting experts on the matter and law enforcement. It puts you in harm's way. Whatever you do, don't meet them or send any money or resources before contacting experts and law enforcement. Good luck and sorry this happened to you.
  • 16y ago
• wizard_2 16y ago
  I feel your pain, I was robbed earlier this week and they took my laptop (among other things). There are two things you can do. 1) Report the serial number and your police case number to the genius bar. If this guy ever goes for service they'll call the cops. This isn't apple's policy but it seems to be an apple store thing. 2) Renters insurance.
• donnawarellp 16y ago
  I would beat the crap out of him
• d2viant 16y ago
  Consider this for next time: http://preyproject.com/ http://preyproject.com/
  • kabuks 16y ago
    Looks great. I know have it installed on my new laptop, and my wife's
• gojomo 16y ago
  If they're willing to buy a 160GB HD for you, appeal to them to just send you the original 240GB HD instead. For them to have their own 240GB+ HD installed may not be much more time/expense.
• auston 16y ago
  I can't help but wonder: Can you look at the original email message & get the IP - then run some GeoIP? If he was irresponsible enough to do it from some public place like a University Library then you could probably look the exact address up & have a lead to give the police. Secondly, depending on if you have chrome & a "trusted" website that you provide your location to, then you can run that bit on this fool in a reply email with a link that says something like "Do me a favor & just upload my pictures folder to http://mysite.com/storage/index.html http://mysite.com/storage/index.html - the user is: johndoe & the pass is: FML123" then wait & obviously log the lat/long & go to the police. Third, if you happen to know the serial number, report it to Apple, then to the police. I say this because he is considering buying a 160gig drive & backing your data up to it - there is a small chance he would go to the Apple store to do this. Next time, consider using http://preyproject.com/ http://preyproject.com/ Other than that I guess try to get what you can from this guy without paying.
  • deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
• DarrenMills 16y ago
  Short and simple; two-fold. 1. Read the advice on this page so that you've allowed yourself to see all possible angles. 2. Call the police and take it one step at a time with them.
• laurasbadideas 16y ago
  This really seems like a scam to me. It's possible that the amount of guilt that this person feels is sufficient to motivate them to buy the a 160 gig disk (and spend time selectively copying the most important data) but not to motivate them to buy a 250 gig disk and copy everything. It's also possible, though, that this person is trying to draw you into a conversation focusing on how important the data is to you, in order to convince you to send money to buy a disk or buy the laptop back. Actually, how sure are you that they even have your laptop? Did you mention the theft someplace public, like on a blog or twitter? The only information they've demonstrated that they have is your email address, the fact that you've used Time Machine at least once (probably a pretty safe bet if they know your laptop was a Mac), and the approximate amount of data that you had stored (assuming you know that's correct and aren't just taking their word for it).
• panic 16y ago
  If you embed an image in an HTML email, you can find the IP of the machine in your server logs (when the email client requests the image from your server).
  • there 16y ago
    most email clients don't automatically show remote images/resources exactly for this reason.
• anigbrowl 16y ago
  how did he get my email? how does he know i backed up to time machine? what would you do? Your browser probably has a cookie that goes to the login page of your email service, which probably defaults to your name even if you type your password in manually every time. That page is likely near the top of your browser history. I do malware removal for friends from time to time and even after years of that I am still surprised by how much information is stored by browsers, and in how many places. Same with time machine, the lists of what were backed up are probably stored on your HD in case you ask it to do a differential backup next time. All those little conveniences and preferences get squirreled away on your hard drive. Your profile says you're in Oakland; with an underfunded police dept and one of the highest murder rates in California, you'll have to do your own detective work and give them an easy collar. If you have the serial number, Apple can assist directly. If not, then there's still hope - the MAC address of your network card is often stored in firmware and may well survive a wipe of the hard disk and reinstall (even assuming the buyer is thorough enough to truly wipe the system). Do you use Wifi in your office? Routers often keep a log of MAC addresses and names of the computers that connect to them. Hardware routers can too, but they're more plug-n-play, whereas usually people configure the wifi to put a password on it and may have enabled the logging if it wasn't on by default. Failing that, since you have this person unwisely offering to help, at the very least you want them to copy your \system and \user folders in their entireties, preferably using some kind of automatic utility instead of by hand so that hidden files and stuff get included. So I say take them up on the offer, be pathetically grateful 'as long as you can get your settings and preferences back'. Having the MAC address won't help you find the computer, but it will help you verify that it's the one which was stolen if the thief hasn't been thorough. Assuming the person actually comes through, there's a reasonable chance that you'll be able to find a log of the last IP address that was used, because they probably contacted you using your own computer. Could be in a coffee shop but if so they probably go there regularly. If it's associated with a residential address you're really in business. The cable or DSL company will probably be willing to tell you if that is the case as long as you don't ask for the street address or subscriber name, because then you can give that information to the police and the cable company won't mind giving it to them the way they would to you - getting a warrant for that ought to be very easy since a theft has occurred. You should report the theft straight away if you haven't already, you can fill them in on the technical details later after you have a case #. If it is a residence, the police will take care of it. Having them turn up with a warrant is intimidating enough for most people, if they have printouts of system logs or something to wave around the thief/roommate/friend will probably spill everything they know, and try to give them enough information to track down whoever broke into your car. It's quite possible that the police already know this person but don't have an open and shut case to make a prosecution easy. Computer data can make for an impressive looking evidence trail, which can lead to a nice story in the local newspaper - 'cops and DA nab thief using computers tracking data'. Good publicity, pleases the taxpayers, deters a few wannabes. If the offer to send back your data is just a cruel bluff, don't give up. You run a website, presumably you log in there all the time. If it's your start page or a favorite, there's a chance that the person opened it in the browser by accident or out of mild curiosity - people are nosy that way. Look at your visitor logs and see if there were any failed connection attempts to your admin account or whatever you have, and what IP addresses they came from. Of course you'll probably have a stack of new connections starting right after your HN posts from people like me. Look at the email timestamp and start tracing logged IP addresses about 90 minutes on either side of it - anything within say 20 miles is a possible. That's enough to be going on with. Take the person up on the offer, maybe with some mealy mouthed words about how you don't have much alternative, suggesting (not explicitly!) that you tried the cops and they were indifferent. Say something pissy as well for credibility. Beg a little for your system and root directories - look at someone else's Mac, I don't know offhand how big those folders get. I would ask for the stuff on DVDs if that does not seem unreasonable: those can be got at Walgreens and the person is much less likely to blow off a trip to walgreens than a trip to store to buy a hard drive; they take fingerprints better than a hard drive will; and the lead-in data may contain forensically useful information.
• mike-cardwell 16y ago
  You should be able to look at the email headers and either track back to the IP of his home connection, or the IP of the email service provider he uses. From there you give the info to the police and get them to issue a warrant or two to get the physical address of where it was sent. If you're lucky they wont have used a proxy to hide their real IP, and wont have used a public access point. Think about any apps you might have running which connect to services online automatically. I have an app which synchronizes my bookmarks with an online service (xmarks.com). I'd be tempted to contact them and ask for an IP address history of my own account to see if I could collect any other IPs that they might have used.
• shareme 16y ago
  Ask the police permission to send him a virus by email..
• DavidSJ 16y ago
  It sounds like he may have visited the website of your email provider. Contact them directly and see if you can get an IP address from them.
• kabuks 16y ago
  Here's what I ended up sending him: ---- Wow. I really appreciate the offer for the backup. Good to know it was stolen as opposed to carelessly left somewhere. You're actually pretty unlucky. I have this software installed for this occasion: lojackforlaptops.com please call me at 510.213.2990 in the next hour if you don't I will immediately activate the lojack theft alert which means law enforcement is showing up at your door promptly. I don't actually know your location, but they reveal it to the cops, who show up at your door with a lot of questions. thank you in advance for doing the right thing cheers, shereef ---- and what I got in return: ---- I use the laptop in public places. And have no internet at home. Sorry but your info is now deleted. Torrenting copyrighted files is illegal also just to let you know. -----
  • meric 16y ago
    That doesn't sound good. :( If I had that installed I'd just have activated it without telling him. Or if I didn't I wouldn't have told him about the software in the first place. Anyways... good luck.
  • whatusername 16y ago
    I would have thought talking to the cops first might have been a good idea... let us know how well lojack works out.
    • kabuks 16y ago
      Yeah, I was attempting a bluff. Clearly not a very good one.
  • jacquesm 16y ago
    This is why you never bluff but just take action. What a silly move.
    • dwwoelfel 16y ago
      "What a silly move." More like, what an infuriating move. Why didn't he take the well-considered advice of the people in the comments? Or post a comment with his intentions so that someone could talk him out of it?
• brentmc79 16y ago
  File a police report, then file a claim with your insurance company. Pony up the deductible, and buy yourself a new laptop and restore it from your time machine backup. Its likely not worth the trouble to pursue getting the stolen property back. This of course assumes that you have decent home owner's or renter's insurance, which should cover theft ever from your car. If you don't, then you should... If someone's already mentioned this, I apologize. I didn't read through all of the comments.
• zokier 16y ago
  If that was my laptop (and it wasn't encrypted), I'd take his offer and then report it to the police. I don't see what you lose on taking his offer, and every theft imho should be reported, if only for making statistics.
• pizzaman 16y ago
  filevault & crashplan.com
• LogicX 16y ago
  Prevention is the best medicine... Checkout my recent blog post on portable security: http://fpux.com/2010/03/23/portable-security/ http://fpux.com/2010/03/23/portable-security/ As previously mentioned, prey project is great. If you combine it with encryption, guest account, and firmware password -- you've created a helpful environment to get your machine back.
• JJMalina 16y ago
  In addition to what others have mentioned I have one piece of advice: Perhaps this person is a visitor of HN and may now be aware of your future course of action. Even if they are completely unfamiliar with HN you have to consider that they have had access to whatever was left of your internet browsing history. Just because they claim to be deleting everything does not mean that they have done it yet. They were able to find your email address, which is easy, but you need to consider the possible extent of their snooping. You need to think about how much of your personal information could be compromised. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst.
• runjake 16y ago
  I regularly track down thieves, theft rings, and other criminals on the Internet, so I can probably give good real-world advice here. Do all of these steps today. Do not contact the sender until you have filed a police report, if possible. Step 1.) Collect all of the evidence you have. Intact email messages are important. Step 2.) Grab a pencil and piece of paper and title it "For the overworked detective". Step 3.) Gather any unique identifiers in the email message headers. Get the originating IP address, geolocate it, find out which ISP owns the IP block (via arin.net) and write all of this down on your piece of paper. If you have a mountain of evidence, print it out and number it page by page, so you (and the detective) can cross reference your notes with the evidence easily. 4.) Google the sender's email address, write down any decent info and rate it (solid/likely/unlikely). Do the same with just the username portion of the email address. 5.) Bring your notes, and your evidence, and file a police report, preferably in person. The CSO will either pencil whip the report into the system or add some of your evidence to the report. No worries, if you have your notes cross-referenced, the detective will be very interested in it. Many police departments are overworked (or claim to be), so if you do the initial legwork and it can be reliably cross-referenced to evidence you'll have more chance of getting your stuff back. Oh and the guy who emailed you has knowingly purchased stolen equipment, which is a crime. My hunch is that he isn't the thief, but personally knows the thief. So, you grab him and you get the other. These guys have probably victimized a whole lot of other people, so good luck. Feel free to email me if you have any questions or need assistance (my email is in my HN profile)
• csomar 16y ago
  Continuing with the investigation of Lionhearted, this person might want to know the exact place of your "sensitive data", instead of searching your hundred gigs. I would suggest that you offer him that you'll return back to him the price that he paid and you won't inform the police. See how it goes with him.
• darwinGod 16y ago
  tough luck...have heard quite a bit of unpleasant stuff about Oakland :( But,why would you want tell the whole world(HN), the exact contents of the mail? And if he were to follow HN.. with comments about tracing IP, etc .. he might have gotten really scared...perhaps your laptop is enroute to your house!
• lsc 16y ago
  I have a somewhat related question. You see, I buy used hardware. Mostly from ebay, sometimes from craigslist. I always walk if it smells funny. (if it seems fishy, I often offer to exchange ID, and if the other guy refuses, I walk. Once someone offered me a good deal on a laptop but wanted to meet me on a freeway offramp. ) Really, even just exchanging ID every time wouldn't solve the problem... you see, many people buy things used, use them for a while (or not) then turn around and sell them, either in hope of turning a profit, or simply because they got bored with the item; I can imagine many ways a stolen item could come to be owned by someone who had no idea that it might be stolen. My question is this: Is there some sort of publicly accessible stolen goods serial number registry or the like that I can check my goods against? I mean, even after I got the thing, if it turned out to be stolen, I'd be cool with returning it and eating the loss. I buy enough stuff to amortize any losses... but both from an ethical and a liability perspective, I'd really like greater assurance that I don't have stolen goods laying about.
• slowpoison 16y ago
  My question is how did he unlock your computer in the first place?
• stevederico 16y ago
  I saw you are in the bay area. You should contact the REACT taskforce they specialize in online and technology based crime. http://www.reacttf.org/ http://www.reacttf.org/ This is a great team, I have dealt with them before and they won't give you the run around like other places.
• CallMeV 16y ago
  Cops. Cops, then the bank, then the insurance firm (you did take out contents insurance on the laptop, didn't you?), and then anybody else you have data on stored in your computer. Ignore anybody telling you that they're going to tell the authorities because you have porn on your drive. It's pretty much a given that every laptop and computer in existence now has some porn on it. If he knows what services you use, for goodness' sakes change every password you can remember. If your passwords are created by a master algorithm that you happen to have stowed on your hard drive, change that algorithm. But first and foremost, cops. Give them all of the index and key numbers which identify it. Make sure to let them see that email. It has an IP address, and they can begin investigating from there.
• MikeVallotton 16y ago
  I read this same post on reddit a few weeks (maybe months?) ago. I'm looking for the post, but it's difficult to find old posts on reddit. From what I recall, that person didn't get their data back, and given the nearly word-for-word similarities between that post and yours, I would guess that this is an ongoing scam.
• kabuks 16y ago
  The final correspondence between us: From me: Hey, I hope you're still checking this email. I owe you an apology. You reached out to me in kindness, and with a good nature. And I responded with a threat. Please accept my sincerest apology. Thank you for your generosity in offering to send me my data. Like you said, I didn't need it b/c I had it all backed up. That was truly considerate of you. I hope that my knee jerk reaction doesn't keep you from continuing to be upright and in integrity. Enjoy the machine, I hope it treats you well. All my best, Shereef -------- I will likely keep it. I am an entrepreneur myself and will actually be putting the computer to use. First by buying a new power adapter. Can't believe you were using a 60 watt adapter. It requires an 85 watt. And i do know you didn't have lojack. I checked the processes and used little snitch to check out going signals. I am sorry that i don't have better integrity but I know that i can put the computer to use and I will continue to do my part in the world and not be a drain on it. ------ Yeah. The lo jack thing was a poor bluff. Good luck man. Seriously. I only wish you the best. May your business be super successful. And listen. Don't be too hard on yourself. In the end we are all going back empty handed. :) It was good to meet you. Write back if you need any help with your biz. Peace Shereef
  • deadmansshoes 16y ago
    Sorry but that whole exchange seems like this (skip to 8 mins in) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snTBE_ykam4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snTBE_ykam4 He sounds like an arrogant toerag. I'd pass on all details to the police.
  • cloudkj 16y ago
    The first thought that popped into my head was - this guy sounds somewhat sophisticated. He might even read HN. I think these emails provide further evidence that this guy may in fact be on HN.