The thief who stole a Macbook Air from hyper-entrepreneur, threewords.me creator and weekend New Yorker Mark Bao has turned the machine in to the police and sent Mr. Bao a note asking for forgiveness. The impetus is likely this video of the thief attempting to pop-and-lock to T.I.’s “Rubber Band Man,” recorded on the stolen Macbook Air, retrieved by remote access and posted to YouTube, Vimeo and Reddit. “Can you please put down the videos you put of me,” the thief wrote in a note posted by The Next Web’s Courtney Boyd Myers.
Apparently not; the video is still up and Mr. Bao’s thirst for revenge yet unslaked. “Update on laptop: laptop recovered! Police were preparing a warrant, but the guy was smart and just turned it in. wish I got more lulz in,” he tweeted.
Har! I can’t think of better punishment…no taking it back from the cloud.. More Here.
One of the techs I worked with had his Macbook stolen from his apartment while he slept. Imagine his surprise when it was brought in the next week for repair by two illegal aliens who had bought it from the thief.
Adding insult to injury.
The entire black gangster culture is amazingly stupid. I laugh out loud when I see those fools holding their pants up with one hand while they walk around. Hell, they don’t even use holsters, just shove their guns down their pants pointed at their balls. I loved the story about one who shot his nut off.
“Moron” is a complement they don’t deserve.
nerdy people: 1. gangsta: 0. you know we also still pull all the sweet tail in the end right?
so, no password on the macbook?
You have to be pretty stupid to steal any kind of consumer computer or communication equipment.
The thing can call home and send a picture or a video of whoever is in front of it, as well as giving away their location to the nearest WiFi or cell access point.
In-car GPS systems must be the worst thing to steal.
These things are useless without being able to read their position to the nearest foot. All they need is a WiFi call-home function and you can follow it right across the planet.
In #4, tom said: no password on the macbook?
Its optional if its a single user system.
If you’re running Oracle or some other database system which requires running on/in its own user space, then you have to put in a password before you’re granted access to a GUI.
That was great!
“Can you please put down the videos you put of me,”
He can’t dance, he’s a thief, and his grammar is bad.
3 time loser. I can only see drug dealing as a career path.
I just want to know what security software was used. Great!!
I had my desktop imac stolen from my house about a year ago. I had logmein.com on it. After about 3 weeks it came online. I logged in and opened photobooth to see where it was. It was in the back of some cell phone shop. I couldn’t find it. No wifi signals to get a location from. Gave the police the IP address, who then had to get a subpoena to get comcast to give them the IP which took 2 weeks. 4 weeks later the police arrive and it was gone. Insurance bought me a brand new one. While I was on I deleted everything I could on it.
So, anyone else wonder if this is just a scam by this so-called ‘hyper-entrepreneur’ Mark Bao to generate some publicity for himself and the suspiciously obvious plug for one of his companies??
@Zybch is pissed off (#11),
exactly. why else would the macbook be unsecured? would anyone trust using threewords.me security if the creator can’t use a simple password?
i. sure. wouldn’t.
funny..
but if want to see some real “payback’s a bitch” concerning stolen compu-stuff, you have to give this hacker’s story at last years Defcon 18 a listen..
Its a bit lengthy at 21min.. but he tells a good (and funny) story (with slide show, including some messed up pics and data of the perp) and it’s instructive in basic security as well..
“Defcon 18 Pwned By the owner What happens when you steal a hackers computer zoz”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=U4oB28ksiIo
enjoy!
-s
I once bought a laptop off Ebay. It turned out to be stolen.
I got the phone number of the owner off it and rang him. We agreed to tell our local police forces about it. I also told the police a *LOT* about the seller. Never sell an IT worker stolen kit. We can track you down better than the police!
Actually, this is not T.I. “Rubberband Man” playing. It’s “Make It Rain” by Travis Porter. Geez.
#15. Hey Thanks for the info, I’ll be sure now to avoid both.
#12, if you’re smart about wanting to recover your computer after being stolen, you wouldn’t password protect the os… theives will just wipe the comp if they can’t get into it, then all your data is gone, as well as your ability to remote into it!
Mr. Bao uses a lot of “in the cloud” tools and services to get back to his computer.
In 2008, an Apple Store employee in New York used the “Back To My Mac” service of the Leopard OS and MobileMe to recover her stolen laptop. Someone told her that she was logged in and trying to buy a bed. She turned on PhotoBooth and took a picture of the thief.
The iPhone has similar capability and can send GPS data.
@McCullough
No problem, sir. Just want to make sure you’re exposed to the least amount of crap music as possible.
Unfortunately this is the kind of guy teenage white girls like to date.