You people are overcomplicating a very simple situation. He works at a hardware store and steals computers (?!?!), the solution can't be that complex.
The laptop belonged to a 'consultant' of WFB, not an employee. Which means WFB had no control over it (Don't ask me why they allowed it on their network in the first place!?!?). The result is that you end up with a laptop full of all sorts of crap. Most of it was probably set up to autostart on autologin. Our friendly neighborhood laptop thief probably plugged it into his "4 port DSL router" when he got home. When he fired it up, it connected 'automagically' to AOL using the stolen screen name. Upon noticing that, he either quickly logged out and back in as himself (phew! that was close) or another computer behind his DSL router was already logged in as his usual screen name or had been recently.
Don't over estimate the abilities of the hardware store employee-laptop stealing community. You'll get burned every time.
Either way, it has to be what most of us consider a dumb mistake and he's probably kicking himself right now.
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Doh, I missed this part:
"He logged onto an (America Online) account that was registered on that computer and we traced it back to his phone number and address,'' White said.
It WAS dialup..
You people are overcomplicating a very simple situation. He works at a hardware store and steals computers (?!?!), the solution can't be that complex.
The laptop belonged to a 'consultant' of WFB, not an employee. Which means WFB had no control over it (Don't ask me why they allowed it on their network in the first place!?!?). The result is that you end up with a laptop full of all sorts of crap. Most of it was probably set up to autostart on autologin. Our friendly neighborhood laptop thief probably plugged it into his "4 port DSL router" when he got home. When he fired it up, it connected 'automagically' to AOL using the stolen screen name. Upon noticing that, he either quickly logged out and back in as himself (phew! that was close) or another computer behind his DSL router was already logged in as his usual screen name or had been recently.
Don't over estimate the abilities of the hardware store employee-laptop stealing community. You'll get burned every time.
Either way, it has to be what most of us consider a dumb mistake and he's probably kicking himself right now.
(he used the AOL login on the computer)