Burglar Nabbed By Backup Program

Bruce Perens writes "A Berkeley, California, burglar engineered his own arrest, and that of his girlfriend, when he stole a laptop and used it as his personal computer. He didn't realize that the laptop had an automatic backup program, and that the photos he took were being copied to his victim's backup repository. Berkeley police recognized him, and his location, from the photos."

Comments

Getting to be a cliche

[gbulmash]

How many times do we have to see this story? There's the famous stolen SideKick from June 2006, then a few months later there was this story about a stolen phone that automatically mailed pics to Flickr, and on and on and on. This is becoming a cliche "stupid thief" story.

Re:Getting to be a cliche

[rarel]

If I had to venture a guess, I'd say the dupes come from the backup repository every few month automatically.

Re:Getting to be a cliche

[Nick Ives]

Amateur criminals will always be funny. The real joke here is that the thief didn't pass the laptop onto a fence straight away, keeping and using things you've stolen is the dumbest thing to do if you're a thief!

Re:Getting to be a cliche

[rackserverdeals]

I mean, how hard is to reformat a pc?

And how was he going to get windows back on it? Just because he's a thief, doesn't mean he's a pirate. :)

Re:Getting to be a cliche

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Note to self: steal the OS install disk too.

Well that's just stupid

[drsquare]

You don't use the laptop you steal, you sell it down the pub or gut it for parts.

Amateur.