I saw this ad on Craigslist:
Stolen White MacBook – $1000 (berkeley)
Date: 2009-07-29, 1:57AM PDT
Reply to: sale-wuutq-1294683068@craigslist.orgWhite MacBook stolen by two African American men near North Berkeley BART at 11:30 PM July 28, 2009. Willing to pay $1000 for the stolen laptop no questions asked as long as information is provided letting me know you have the laptop I want. Tell me the screensaver and the name of a few documents on the desktop.
Wow – $1,000 just to get your own laptop back, when you can buy it new for less. Clearly, this person is offering to pay ransom for his/her data. Specifically, for one or both of two things:
- to get the data back
- to prevent others from seeing it
As for #2, sorry, it’s too late. If there’s anything juicy on the MacBook – too bad, it’s already out there. As for #2, that may work .. or not. Which brings me to the often discussed point of laptop / notebook security: there is none.
Whether it’s thieves, industrial spies or Customs Agents at International Airports, just about anybody can dig into your data: it’s simply not safe to carry it around on an easy target like a laptop. Keep it in the Cloud instead.
When you use Web-based apps, you only have to replace the stolen / broken hardware, your data is still and instantly available to you as soon as you get online. The computer / iPhone / Startek Communicator are just access devices, they are no longer the trusted Vault where your data resides (and escapes from).
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Bonus: a Dell-sponsored study on laptop airport security and theft. But don’t click their link, unless you want quick Death by PDF. Here’s the easy-to-read version instead.
“Tell me the screensaver and the name of a few documents on the desktop.” This suggests that there was no password set to log into the system and access the Desktop. That’s bad. There is one more explanation for $1000: the data is not necessary sensitive but it is of high-value e.g. family pictures that were not backed up, some work documents that might require hours of re-work etc.
I like the person posting an ad on Craigslist – probably one of the best ways to reach out the person who stole it!
Good point, Zoli. None of the devices in Star Trek really store large amounts of data, especially restricted data. Not the tricorders, not the communicators, not the PADDs…