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Stolen Laptop Owner Outwits Mugger, Police, and the Media
An anonymous reader writes "What do you get mugged in Central London and the local police are too incompetent to find a mugger even with his address and photograph? You may not be able to get to the laptop, but you still own the photos and data on it, so you set up the NSFW Plumpergeddon blog which gives details of the subsequent 'owner's' 'Brick House Butts' fetishes. Now of course later the IT media might get interested and offer an interview with a promise to let him review the article and keep his name secret. luckily our hero is not so innocent and demonstrates the value of using a false name on the internet as well as planting your own monitoring software on your laptop."
What do you post articles that are unintelligible?
Editing is a lost art.
Based on the content of the summary, I have no fucking idea what this story is about.
Just delete this and start over. Really. How does this word-salad get approved for publication to millions of people?
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
I've read this twice and I'm still confused.
I'll try to translate what I think the article says: ...
1. Man was mugged and lost his laptop.
2. Police won't do anything about it.
3. He has hidden software on his old laptop that was sending images and data back to him.
4. He posted it on the Internet under a fake name
5.
6. Profit?
Incompetent editing can't write good but maybe give interview in IT media if keep name secret yesno?
Sense making this summary very much doesn't however is okay because Slashdot's really been going downhill these past 15 years.
I are unintelligible and I are endorse this message.
Life needs more saving throws.
What do you a new Slashdot meme has been created.
And I guess the submitter missed the other story that came out of England a few weeks ago where the theft victim similarly posted the "thieves" photos all over, only to discover the people he was harassing were innocent.
That's not really relevant because in this case the mugger also used the victim's debit card to buy a subscription to the fat chick porn website he's been caught wanking over. There is no question that he's 100% culpable here.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
He hasn't tracked the thief, but his laptop regularly sends photos and screenshots while the laptop is in use. This is old news, from a tech perspective.
But, in any case, it's not a terribly interesting tech story.
The tech part of the story is that, although the laptop-tracking software technically works without any fault (well almost, but the thiefs stupidly worked around the part that didn't work), it has done nothing on the overall to help the case.
Police just ignores him.
This kind of software has always been sold/touted as the ultimate solution for lost and stolen laptops, as the best weapon against thieves.
But ultimately, it doesn't make any difference that the software worked flawlessly.
I my opinion this boils down to the motivation of the various parties involved.
For the police, handling the case would require lots of resource (paperwork, permits and warrants, interrogating the suspect, searching his home, more paperwork, etc...) and some risks (usually stolen laptops are resold, so often the people using them aren't the thieves but are thinking they use a legitimately bought 2nd hand latop, so in theory there's a risk of harassing the wrong guy - although in this case, the robbed victim has found a lot of credible arguments, including that the suspect started using the laptop a couple of hours after the mugging [too short for the laptop to be sold as 2nd hand] and using the same asset [porn site access,articles for sale on ebay] that were billed on the stolen bank card during the dozen of hours after the mugging until the bank blocked the card. That's quite a lot of coincidence and would require further police investigation) for a crime which - from their point of view - wasn't really a violent crime (no one got kiled) happens regularily and isn't a high threat to the general population.
So they didn't do a lot.
Meanwhile, the bank has quite a lot of money at stake in this case, (7k british pounds), so *they* did take the case seriously, did consider the victim's arguments, did their own internal investigation, and finally decided to reimburse the victim.
He should probably contact the insurance company. Lost laptop cost a lot to the insurance companies, so they would pay more serious attention to the information that the victim has gathered, and have a strong financial incentive to pressure the police to retrieve the stolen goods.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]