Stolen laptop

[StevenNevets]

Luckily not mine, I don't even have one.

Some girl I know got her labtop, a bunch of jewelry, and clothes got stolen out of her luggage when it went on the wrong flight.

Now whoever took it is using her aim/facebook and going through everything on it.



Can anything be done about that?

[Fovos]

not really other than try to sue the airlines for loss on private property. you can ask for money return of the lost items you are going to get them for sure and if you are lucky maybe for damages.
there are lots of laws for the people about the airlines that most people dont know.
also she need to go on facebook, im, emails, bank accounts etc. and change passwords on everything just in case she had some store somewhere.

[LordBeer]

I feel bad for them but hopefully there is a lesson learned here. If things are important to you, make them carry on luggage. Also if you're going to keep all that private info on an easily stolen laptop, encrypt that shit! There are enough stories about stolen laptops with tons of confidential info on them but people havent seemed to learn anything.

I agree with Fovos. She needs to contact the websites that have been accessed so far. Maybe they can get an IP number that will start a trail to recovery. Hell I just found an article on how a laptop was recovered because of SETI @ Home!

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/22/stolen-laptop-recove.html

I'd also recommend perhaps telling the police.

I wish her luck.

[StevenNevets]

Not sure if that was clear enough in the op but she got the luggage, they sent it home a few days later and charged $75 for it. Some stuff was left but all the good stuff was gone.


I'm pretty sure she doesn't even know the passwords, just relies on the password cookies:woot:



And alright, ip tracing sounds possible. Up to them to follow through on it, not me.
How much do police really care about this stuff?

[LordBeer]

Laptops are expensive pieces of equipment. Depending on the jurisdiction and the price of the laptop it could be considered grand theft. Whatever the case, the police are the best way to get the ball rolling. You'll need their assistance if one hopes to get subpoena to track down the IP. I'd just hope for her sake she gets on this FAST before the thief becomes smart enough to reformat it.

[sir_digalot]

i always carry my laptop with me on the plane, even if i do not intend on using it, and any other small electronic device.

yes encrypt at best they will never get in, at worst it will give you (the victim) enough time to call the necassary banks etc, and get the accounts locked down.

as for facebook/aim and such, you can contact the sites to inform them that someone else is in your accounts, but really do not expect them to do too much, but now is very important to notify all the major fifnacial institutes and credit agencies, since the perpatraitor will now have the name and address and probably the social and other info, which they can sell or use for fraud...

contact the police first off get a case number then if you(they) should needto make a claim you have some backup as to the fact it was not you that was buying up newegg or wherever without a police case number the CC companies and credit bureaus will laugh at you(them)

[CassiusMelacor]

I wonder if LoJack for laptops would have been any use..

[sir_digalot]

actually i would like a self destruct doohickey, at least something that will render the machine basically unusable ie destroy the cpu gpu hard drive electronics like a small emp or the like.... though it would have to be very secure i could imagine a hacker/script kiddie making use of the system for fun

[Fovos]

if she goes to the websites Facebook etc or whatever she had and go to forgot password they will send her new ones and then from there she can do one at a time.
airlines they dont deal with lost bags they have these other agencies dealing with them.
when she received her bag, the right thing to do is to check at the spot and not sign about it. or even better if you lost a bag dont accept delivery, tell them that you are going to pick it up from airport when they found it. that way you can claim that they lost your property. if you accepted it, they will say that you are lying.

i travel once a year overseas and i just learn to deal with it. during the nature of the flight hours my bags always stay behind somewhere. i had to deal with some weird and really upsetting stories but i never put anything that it is valuable. always carrying with me expensive stuff.

what airlines was it by the way?

[CassiusMelacor]

I have not played around with it yet, but TrueCrypt allows for system partition encryption. Should minimize loss (still have the missing computer, but no data should be accessed by thief).

[antigen]

she checked her laptop??!?!?!

WTF was she thinking!!?!?!??!!?!??!

[Crotch-Rot]

TrueCrypt rocks! TrueCrypt basically creates a file of X size and mounts that as a virtual partition. I have my "sensitive" data in there.

[CassiusMelacor]

Link about the system partition encryption feature for TrueCrypt.

http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=system-encryption

[kilroy0097]

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/19/2249231

Check this link out for more information on Stolen Laptops. Might be some useful info in that. At least on future thefts.

[StevenNevets]

She got a new one, yay rich kids:thumbsup:


Feel free to continue the discussion though, isn't bad to know this stuff.