Mark Bao tracks down his stolen laptop and has the last laugh

[biggitybones]

"The thief has since returned the laptop, in hopes of clemency in the form of the YouTube video being pulled. Bao has indicated, though, that he's not interested in cutting a deal. Instead, he's content using backup service Backblaze—which syncs changes made to the laptop in the cloud—to find access the guy's Facebook page, dig up PhotoBooth pictures he took, and generally let him stew in his internet humiliation for a while." - http://gizmodo.com/#!5784633/laptop-thiefs-ridiculous-dance-...

Now he's just turned it into a plug for his startup. Smart guy.

[citricsquid]

Mark has no connections to Backblaze does he?

[ugh]

Doing that would be very much illegal in Germany. Isn’t it in the US?

[garyrichardson]

As someone who's had plenty of things stolen in the past, these stories make me happy.

The vengeful part of me hopes this jerk gets laughed out of every job interview he ever has for being the guy who stole the computer and had his dancing video put on youtube.

[pavel_lishin]

I didn't dig deep into the story, but I'm guessing that a guy who records himself dancing around like a jackass probably doesn't have too many job interviews - and the ones he does have are probably not with people who read about news items like this.

[theklub]

Sadly if it became popular enough he may profit from it.

[noodle]

as an update, he got his laptop back (thief turned it in, perhaps because he knew he was caught). because he now has 2 airs, he's going to auction off the original and donate proceeds to japan efforts.

[blhack]

I absolutely hate this sort of vigilantism. How does anybody know that the guy in the video is actually the guy that stole the laptop? How do we know that he isn't just some guy who bought it on craigslist?

[markbao]

I didn't want to accuse the wrong guy, but based on the file history, he created his new user account the same day it was stolen. That was hunch enough for me.

[uxp]

I'm obviously biased by visiting HN, but buying any computer used that has not been wiped is a sure indication that it is stolen. I'd like to give the guy the benefit of the doubt as well, but there is ample indication in this article alone that he either has no clue about technology and the responsibility of buying one used or was the one that stole it.

If it turns out he bought it legitimately without knowledge of it being stolen that's fine, but he still should have been turned on to the fact it's filled with someone else's crap and the username is not his. Ignorance is no excuse, even though it may be commonplace.

[varjag]

A guy living next door to the victim, possessing his laptop, is not a thief, but rather got it off Cragilist.. mm.

Possible? Yes.

Likely? No.

[rokhayakebe]

Because the idiot returned the laptop and ask him to pull down the video. If he bought it, he would actually try to press charges against Mark. By returning it he somewhat said "guilty".

[skunkworks]

Yes, what a cosmic coincidence that this guy, who lives in the same building as Mark Bao, happened to purchase what he thought was a legitimate laptop on Craigslist!

[philthy]

We also don't know the circumstances of the "theft", very possible he left it unattended in a public space, and it was more or less found. Plus how was the guy powering it, did he get the charger too? If he happened to have a charger already (highly unlikely) I doubt he would be making films in photobooth, on something he stole when he has a similar if not identical device... Personally I would peg Bao as a guy to have a password on his device too. Obviously the HD wasn't purged if Backblaze was still running.

This whole story screams promotion for Backblaze, it is also the first tag of the article.

[geoffw8]

The guy nicked his laptop! He deserves everything he gets.

[davidw]

It'd just be better if he turned the guy in to the police and let them deal with it. The article and some comments make it sound like he's toying with the guy a bit, which just doesn't seem right. If the guy is indeed the thief, as it seems, he should get punished by the law.

[laut]

Buying stolen goods isn't much better than stealing.

[tibbon]

If I bought a laptop in Boston, and it came up with the username of Mark Bao... I'd give Mark a call instantly and ask him what was up.

Its not like Mark is a hard guy to Google for or unknown in Boston.

[Stormbringer]

On the stolen laptop theme, I recently saw a youtube video by an Australian chap which went like this:

Tenant/house-guest (who is wanted for fraud in several states) ran off, leaving several thousand dollars in rent in arrears and in the process stealing three laptops.

FAB (the victim) gets some reports from friends a couple of weeks later that the perp is staying in a nearby motel. FAB goes around early-ish in the morning, knocks of the perps door, and the perp opens the door and the discussion gets heated. FAB is 'forced to defend himself' cough and after he finishes bouncing the perps head off the walls and is waiting for the police and ambulance to arrive (perp is un/semi-conscious), eh enters the motel room, recognises the three laptops, and puts them in the boot of his car.

Police arrive. Ambo turns up and hauls perp off to hospital. Police insist that FAB give the laptops to the motel manager, and they tell the motel manager to await further instructions.

Later that day perp checks himself out of hospital, goes back to motel, asks for laptops, manager gives them to him, and then high-tails it off to Victoria (the other end of Australia).

Moral of the story: police are useless no matter what country you are in.

[Andys]

As an aussie I can't say I'm surprised. The police hardly have time for a stolen car anymore, let alone a laptop.

[dstein]

Mark should try to hack it so it broadcasts live without the thief's knowledge. It could be a huge inside joke where nobody tells him, kind of like The Truman Show.

[OstiaAntica]

It probably violates wiretap law to knowingly tape this guy, even on a stolen laptop.

[pavel_lishin]

I wonder what the legality of profiting off something like that would be.

[gojomo]

Ultimately, the same sort of self-help Mark has used for recovery could be used by criminals for identity-theft against others.

How? Preload a cheap laptop with software to let you monitor it. (This could be made way more sophisticated, and hard to eradicate, than a online backup subscription.) Leave it somewhere to be stolen. Monitor its later use for information that could allow stealing many times the initial laptop value from its later users. (Those later users may in some instances be the laptop thief, but could more often be others who thought they were buying a cheap used laptop.)

This is a good reason to beware deals that seem too good to be true, when purchasing used computer goods.

[charlief]

The detective work reminds me of an old great (p-p-p-powerbook):

http://www.zug.com/pranks/powerbook/

[chaosmachine]

Unfortunately, that story has a rather bad ending[1], but I guess most people don't read that far.

"Finally, and most disturbingly, Jeff was not heard from again. I personally e-mailed him for permission to run his story on ZUG, but after an initial response, I never heard from him again. All of his Web sites have come down, and he is nowhere to be found."

[1] http://www.zug.com/pranks/powerbook/index04.html

[rokhayakebe]

This story made my day.

[pmikal]

I tracked down a stolen laptop using Prey (http://preyproject.com/) and Live Mesh's remote desktop. Upon having the laptop stolen, Prey notified my it was online. I remote connected, installed a keylogger and used that along with Prey's camera images to identify the thief and have the person arrested.

[thematt]

This is the perfect situation where Prey (open source), would have come in handy: http://preyproject.com/

[pedrokost]

I preferred the story of Zoz. He provides a detailed explanation of how he recovered his lost Mac. http://hackaday.com/2010/12/25/a-hackers-marginal-security-h...

[mklappstuhl]

Am I the only one that thinks that this could be a contrived story?

[fuzzmeister]

As I said above, I can absolutely vouch for the veracity of this story. I talked to Mark the day he got his laptop stolen, and I was talking to him when he realized that it was still backing up to Backblaze.

[alphadog]

Mark needs to do my PR. He always seems to find a way to get into the news.

[AbyCodes]

Here is a similar video cum presentation ( and its better in my opinion ) :

Defcon 18 : Pwned by the owner - What happens when you steal a hackers computer -- zoz part http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4oB28ksiIo

The Presentation is really funny, but some may find the "invasion of privacy" a little disturbing. Its kinda on the extreme side ( warned! ) but is very informative and funny nonetheless.

[geoffw8]

I've seen this before, epic, well worth a watch. man likes booty

[SriniK]

Why is it #1 HN entry? It's a sincere question.

[nakkiel]

"Don't steal computers belonging to people who know how to use computers"

Implying using a data sync service turns one into one of the chosen few who "know how to use computers".

[huhtenberg]

It'd be nice to know why the guy captured on video is in fact the theif (and say not someone who got the laptop off Craigslist).

[mncolinlee]

Best cloud backup sales pitch ever! Then again, I wonder how much data gets stolen from badly-designed cloud apps.

[esad]

I'm not sure Mark is the smarter one in this one. If the thief has been able to auto log-in as him and fill his browser history, this probably means that he can also read Mark's history and the rest of his home directory is lying there unencrypted, with his identity wide exposed.