Girl recovers stolen laptop with Back to my Mac

Wed May 14, 2008 6:13AM EDT

See Comments (14)

Being tech-savvy paid off for Kait Duplaga, an Apple store employee who helped police recover $5,000 worth of electronics stolen from her apartment after using her Mac's built-in camera and a program called 'Back to My Mac'. Apparently, the woman and her roommates held a party two weeks earlier which the perpetrators attended. While they were out on the night of April 27, Edmon Shahikian and Ian Frias ransacked the place taking with them two flat screen televisions, iPods, gaming consoles, DVDs and two laptops, one of which eventually led to their arrest.

A couple of days after the burglary, one of Kait's friends noticed her stolen computer was online so she called Kait, who was at work at the Apple store. Kait immediately logged on to her computer remotely with "Back to My Mac" program and noticed the thieves were shopping for beds online. She then activated her Mac's iSight camera and was able to snap a picture of one of the thieves which her friends recognized as Ian Frias. To make a long story short, she took the pictures—and names—to the police, and now the two not-so-clever thieves face some jail time and of course, public humiliation as this story continues to make the rounds online.

Ah, when will thieves learn not to mess with Macs?

Link: Stolen laptop leads victim to alleged thieves (via lohud)

Related: 

Tracking Down Your Stolen Mac
Fighting Back Laptop Thieves
Security tips for Net-connected travelers

Comments on Girl recovers stolen laptop with Back to my Mac

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  • 1 Posted by osgood35fan on Wed May 14, 2008 9:40AM EDT Report Abuse

    Do you know of any similar programs for Vista users? Great thinking on her part!

  • 2 Posted by fletcjk on Thu May 15, 2008 8:05AM EDT Report Abuse

    How did she know that her laptop was online?

  • 3 Posted by psunjka on Thu May 15, 2008 12:55PM EDT Report Abuse

    I could share my story with you: A while ago, my apartment building was an invite for burglars, it had a history of repeated break-ins. I installed on my PC a Creative's program for remote monitoring (came bundled with my webcam) that turns on and sends an email and/or pics of everything that activated a motion sensor. After a couple of weeks, I received an email from my webcam saying that something is happening. I called the janitor, sent pics to police... The outcome? I lost my PC and about 50 music CDs, burglars never got caught due to the negligence and pigheadedness of Montreal's Police... The good thing is that the PC was a junk, but I still mourn over my CDs...

  • 4 Posted by tecnozone on Thu May 15, 2008 1:27PM EDT Report Abuse

    See psunjka that is why you should get a mac ;D

  • 5 Posted by tuba_guy_08 on Thu May 15, 2008 4:21PM EDT Report Abuse

    macs are better than pc for this sort of reason its the security of the product thats why i have one and love it everyday

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