When Josh Kaufman's MacBook was stolen from his apartment in Oakland, California, it would have been the end of the story - if Josh hadn't had the foresight and curiosity to install Hidden, a Mac app that locates your laptop and sends you surreptitious pictures of the thief.
Kaufman said the laptop was stolen on 21 March and though he'd told police the location of his laptop, they said a lack of resources meant they couldn't help. After successfully attracting attention by publishing pictures of a man in possession of the laptop and posting them on Tumblr for nearly two months, Kaufman was told that police had tracked down and arrested the man.
"An Oakland police officer just called me to let me know that they arrested the guy in my photos!" he wrote last night. "The police used my evidence (email which pointed to a cab service) that he was a driver and tricked him into picking them up."
Kaufman's blog showed the man sleeping next to the laptop, using it in bed, driving, deleting Kaufman's account and logging into his email, which turned out to be his final undoing.
This is all wonderful publicity for Hidden, of course, which charges $15 per year to track one computer. It does still require the user to have the foresight to protect their devices in advance, which is still the major obstacle of insuring or protecting any device. It's normally only when you've lost something that you think about how you could have protected it, so let this be a warning.
Kaufman's story has been widely picked up and fascinates us because we think we are seeing a villain being caught. In reality, this guy might not be the one who actually stole the laptop, and also raises some other uncomfortable questions about privacy; because we believe this man has committed a crime, we feel no compunction about looking at covert images of him at home or following his activity online.
More worryingly, it doesn't take a huge leap of imagination to see how this software could be used in a more sinister way with an innocent subject. It may seem like protection, but there's more than an element of voyeurism in here too.
Kaufman said the laptop was stolen on 21 March and though he'd told police the location of his laptop, they said a lack of resources meant they couldn't help. After successfully attracting attention by publishing pictures of a man in possession of the laptop and posting them on Tumblr for nearly two months, Kaufman was told that police had tracked down and arrested the man.
"An Oakland police officer just called me to let me know that they arrested the guy in my photos!" he wrote last night. "The police used my evidence (email which pointed to a cab service) that he was a driver and tricked him into picking them up."
Kaufman's blog showed the man sleeping next to the laptop, using it in bed, driving, deleting Kaufman's account and logging into his email, which turned out to be his final undoing.
This is all wonderful publicity for Hidden, of course, which charges $15 per year to track one computer. It does still require the user to have the foresight to protect their devices in advance, which is still the major obstacle of insuring or protecting any device. It's normally only when you've lost something that you think about how you could have protected it, so let this be a warning.
Kaufman's story has been widely picked up and fascinates us because we think we are seeing a villain being caught. In reality, this guy might not be the one who actually stole the laptop, and also raises some other uncomfortable questions about privacy; because we believe this man has committed a crime, we feel no compunction about looking at covert images of him at home or following his activity online.