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Mac Thief Caught Thanks To Applescript & Timbuktu

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the funny-late-night-story dept.

el.cerrito.slasher sent in an amusing bit found on MacSlash. This story is a tale of a stolen iMac that just happened to be running Timbuktu (a remote control program like VNC I believe). Well the stolen box kept getting used, and the owner was able to track it down through a variety of amusing Timbuktu Fu. Funny story.

2 of 367 comments (clear)

  1. right-fucking-on! by spongman · · Score: 1, Redundant

    what a great story. the geek fights back - and gets a conviction out of it to boot.

  2. The scary thing is, it works.... by mblase · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Wouldn't it be great if every Mac/WinTel computer came with a stripped-down, Timbuktu-like program as part of the operating system? That way, owners and police could locate and retrieve it any time it was stolen anywhere in the world...

    Kidding, of course. But you know that Microsoft is working on something like this already, if they haven't finished it by now. On the other hand, it *would* be nice to have a THIRD-PARTY tool that I could purchase separately (for less than Timbuktu) that would let me do things like this, locate it online anywhere should it be stolen simply by using a login/password combination I secretly set myself. It wouldn't do any system-takeover kind of stuff, just tell me what phone number or static IP it's being used at. Yes, a hard-drive format would solve the thieves' problem for me, but as this story indicates, not everyone is that careful when dealing with stolen property.

    I just don't want Microsoft to install it for me by default. But that's a given.