Woman uses 'Back to my Mac' to get stolen MacBook back

A Westchester, New York woman has her MacBook back after having it stolen by two Bronx men. How did she accomplish this?  Turns out she works at an Apple Store and, as part of her job, demonstrates the functionality of "Back to My Mac" remote desktop software that comes with .Mac accounts.

The woman, Kait Duplaga, was alerted to the fact that the criminals were using her computer online by a friend via phone who said she was coming up on iChat.

Right about now, you know these thieves aren't the sharpest tools in the shed.  Not only did they turn her computer on but they then connected it to her AIM account. Once their IP address is logged into AOL's servers, they could have already been caught.  Thankfully for the criminals, the police weren't very sharp either and didn't consider this option. The same New York cops weren't able to "solve" the famous Sidekick theft a few years back.

Kait then got the idea that she could use the remote desktop (Screen Sharing.app) application in Back to my Mac to connect to her computer.  She then turned the camera on and watched the perpetrators walking around the room.  She snapped a few pictures with (the more than obvious) screen flash and then uploaded the files to her desktop computer.  Apparantly the criminals didn't notice that their pictures were being snapped by the Photobooth app that counts down a huge "3...2...1" then flashes the whole screen.  If they had noticed or were smart enough to care, they could have turned the computer off or disconnected it from the network.

The police, according to the New York Times, still weren't able to figure  out who the criminals were (this might be the saddest part of the whole story).   They have photos of the criminals and could easily have the IP address.  At this point, Kait showed the picture to some friends who recognized the criminals as "friends of friends" who attended a party at her house a month earlier.

Armed with the names, addresses, and faces of the criminals, the police were able to make arrests.

If this ever happans to anyone out there, just get the IP address of your computer (http://checkip.dyndns.org).  You can then get a police order to send to the IP owner (ISP - find this by going to http://www.arin.net) and obtain a real address of the perpetrators.  Not every criminal is dumb enough to let you take their pictures, then upload them to your computer.  However, from their track record, it seems police aren't going to be much help either.

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