5 ms·

This would be a neat way to catch a laptop thief.

• Tycho 16y ago
  that's what I was thinking. make it send the pics to a web archive whenever it finds an open connection. then you'd almost want your laptop to get stolen
  • pyre 16y ago
    You could create a honeypot netbook and take it with you to places like Starbucks and just leave it out when you go to the bathroom,etc.
    • Tycho 16y ago
      Do this, follow it up, expose the thief, make a blog of it, and the advertising income from the blog will probably recoup the laptop cost.
    • jacquesm 16y ago
      That's pretty close to entrapment.
• Timothee 16y ago
  Prey actually does it as part of their reports on stolen laptops: http://preyproject.com/ http://preyproject.com/ Probably not with PhotoBooth though :)
• adamdecaf 16y ago
  Before reading the article I thought it was going to be about catching thieves.
• mh_ 16y ago
  I just recently submitted an app called iTried to the Mac app store which was kinda built for this (http://bit.ly/hEDJTw http://bit.ly/hEDJTw) iTried listens for screensaver stopped events, and then takes the picture. I disabled tweetpic'ing the picture when submitting to the app store, but will re-enable in an update.
• raghava 16y ago
  But wouldn't a slightly smart thief be able to beat it by using a small sticker on the webcam? I know a smart lady who (after reading about webcams on compromised machines being used to take snaps without the knowledge of unsuspecting users) used a simple fix; stick a bindi(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bindi.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bindi.jpg) on the webcam.