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Wifi and Laptops Adds Up To Theft
Ant writes to mention an SFGate article about the increase in laptop theft in the world of ubiquitous wifi. From the article: "San Francisco police statistics show a disturbing trend. Just 18 laptop computer robberies were logged in 2004, but the figure jumped to 48 last year. There were 18 as of the end of March, a pace that could surpass 70 crimes this year. 'It's a changing culture, and crime is following it'"
Attacking someone for their laptop isn't really any different than attacking them for anything else. This isn't new. Whenever you reveal in public something of particular worth, there's a possibility that some moron is going to attack you in the hopes of stealing it from you.
TFA points out that people congregate with laptops at hotspots. This is true. Thiefs know they can find one or many at such a place.
Before I RTFA'd, I had the same thought. Afterwards, I still have the contention that people would still sit at starbucks and work on excel wireless or no.
More laptops does = more crime. Hotspots may be a factor, but not nearly like they make it out to be.
in Milpitas (McCarthy Ranch) that thieves have been targeting. They do there during lunch and right after work, and do "smah and grab" style robberies on cars. The target: laptops in bags left unattended while the victim shops. Police have had to issue special alerts to shoppers.
Put your laptop in the trunk when you leave your office, so that potential thieves don't see you place it there when you arrive at the mall.
If you consider that San Francisco consists of millions of people... is 18 really a lot? I mean sure, stolen property it stolen property, but the figures sound rather minute.
In a recent speech Negropante said: "You see. When I said we were building $100 laptops for developing countries, you people assumed I meant Africa. What I was referring to was Caliifrnia. Have you been to some of the neighborhoods in LA? You can get killed for your shoes. In order to make it safer for folks in cities like San Fracisco where, let's face it, they cannot defned themselves, I developed this idea. Give them an etch-a-sketch interface, and an off brand of Linux, and NO self respecting thief would even bother.
Sure, thre will be the occasional bully who takes your cheap computer just to break it and watc you cry. That is life. But there will be no secondary market for these computers. EVAR!
I fully expect to win a Nobel for this."
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
18, 48, and 70? In San Francisco? I would have guessed that number to be several times that.
Hmm...actually, for 2004, there was nearly 5 times as many murders as there were laptop thefts. Moral of the story is that if you carry a laptop, you are 5 times less likely to be murdered!
Please check out my reasonably priced notebooks on EBay!
I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy.
I'm not saying this is the only precaution one should take, or that it's guaranteed to work. But it's easy to do and increases the likelihood that some evidence will be captured. It depends on the stupidity of the thief, and those kinds of people often just aren't that smart.
I have a Thinkpad (pre-Lenovo, so it'a good one) with wifi, and a biometric figerprint scanner. Can I assume that I am at a greater risk of being robbed and having my finger(s) cut off?
That would really be the only logical conclusion.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
I'd like to see the creation of a publicly accessable stolen property registry, to make it harder for thieves to sell their loot. Auction sites, like eBay, could require sellers to list the serial numbers, if any, of all items that they are selling.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Once again I think the summarizer has confused the words and thus the discussion.
The key word here is robbery, which means violence or intimidation being used to steal the property.
I'm sure the number of laptop thefts is vastly higher. I worked at one company in the south of market area a few years back that was broken into several times and lost nearly 10 laptops alone.
I work at a large book retailer that has a well-established network of coffee bars outfitted with wireless hotspots.
This company loves for customers to hang out for hours (and truth be told, many hang out all day and night several days a week) because they invariably buy more stuff the longer they stick around. The longer they stay, the more relaxed they become. When it comes time to get a new book, many will simply get up and walk away from their unattended laptop for anywhere between 1 and 20 minutes (don't get me started on table camping). Many days I've stood there during slow periods in amazement at the amount of very expensive hardware just left in the open with no one to watch it.
It's inevitable that thieves will begin to exploit this as I've seen the same level of carelessness at similar retailers and sister stores in several states. There really isn't much I can do about it other than make friendly reminders when talking to customers - which risks offending the all-too-common customer with the over-inflated sense of self importance who finds any suggestion that they alter their behavior in any way (even if it will benefit them) as a severe insult.
I try to keep an eye on things, even though it's not my responsibility, and I'm usually too busy to notice what's going on in the seating area unless there is a major disturbance (in other words: never).
"Casual" laptop theft is going to increasingly be a problem, but not one that I fear to any great extent as in most cases it can be defeated with the help of common sense which itself is a rare commodity these days.
Everyone knows that it's the lack of pirates. Lacking their true career in naval piracy our potential pirates are forced to plunder laptops.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.