Why stealing laptops can be really bad.

[digitalwanderer]

UPDATE: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22762

Some of the technobabble that the professor spouted to out the thief was impressive, but has not been found to work well yet.

He claimed that there were passive trackers embedded in the bezel of laptop screens beside the wireless transmitters. Technology like this does sort of exist, but is rare and not used by anyone outside the Department of Energy.

He also claimed that the wireless card in the laptop triggered some location data. This is possible, but pretty unlikely.

In fact a University spokesman told ABC that Rine had indeed made the whole thing up to scare the student into handing over the laptop. The story has for some reason now been pulled from the ABC site, but can be found here. There might be a bit of a clue as to the way Rine operates in an article here, in which he says: "Although I have unlimited respect for facts, and delight in their discovery and appreciation, I have come to the obvious yet almost blasphemous view that, with respect to teaching, the facts just aren't that important."

Despite all the exaggeration, and threats, the thief has ignored Rine and has kept his laptop. Still it was worth a crack.

 

[mito]

However, if the thief wasn't a computer literate as we are, probably he would have been caught. Newbies usually get scared with such "FBI/Big Brother" threats. Perhaps the professor himself was a computer newbie...

 

[digitalwanderer]

I'm waiting for the thief to retaliate by releasing any embarressing info he can find from the laptop now.

 

[mito]

I'm waiting for the thief to retaliate by releasing any embarressing info he can find from the laptop now.

If that were the case, the professor would have kept a very low profile.

 

[rashly]

I work at a school district and we put stuff ont he computers where we can trace them by IP address if they are stolen.

by ip ? Wouldn't the ip change as soon as he plugged it into his own connection ? Don't u mean mac address ? Which you could force to change or even just buy a new wifi card or lan card for hte laptop and use that and have a totaly diffrent mac address

Supposedly there is a chip or something of the sort on there that will send out a signal to "where-ever" that includes the current IP. From that IP, we can track trhoguh the ISP where that person is. It also supposedly survives low level formats.

I don't know much more about how it works though.

 

[Maintank]

Sound like somebody is desperate to get said laptop back.

Not sure what is more pathetic, the fact somebody stole a laptop or the people who want it back think somebody is stupid enough to buy into their BS about tracking devices and seeing multiple versions of the OS.

Of course this whole time they know where the laptop is but havent actually went and got it but just talk about getting it.

yeah yeah desperation at its finest.